Chitosan – a non-invasive approach for the preservation of historical textiles

Abstract

Old textiles represent important samples of the mobile cultural heritage, having implications on the social and spiritual life of each population. In order to keep them in the best condition, it is necessary to implement methods to prevent damages, but also to rehabilitate and clean the already affected fabrics. In the case of textiles that need to be treated, a fundamental thing is the unaltered preservation of the initial characteristics of the materials, even after the interventions. The aim of our study is to test the feasibility of a non-invasive alternative to usual chemicals for cleaning textiles; Chitosan’s antimicrobial and cleaning effects on a pair of Romanian traditional cotton trousers, from Maramures area was analyzed. A few images were taken from SEM of untreated and treated fabric with Chitosan solution using different magnifications, in order to check the changes on the fabric surface. The purpose was to observe if there are some color changes after Chitosan treatment, so the CIELAB color values (L,a,b) of untreated and treated samples were analyzed. The analysis of the treated samples revealed strong antimicrobial effects of Chitosan.