From 7^th to 10^th of May 2019 four members of our UT Analytical Chemistry group – Dr Signe Vahur, Dr Anu Teearu-Ojakäär, PhD students Pilleriin Peets and Eliise Tammekivi – attended the 7^th international TechnArt conference in Bruges, Belgium.

The biggest conference of analytical techniques of cultural heritage

TechnArt is a place to present and discuss the newest results of the usage of analytical techniques in the field of cultural heritage. It is the biggest conference among its kind as it was also seen in TechnArt 2019, where the number of participants was about 400! The conference included three parallel oral presentation sessions, two poster sessions with 270 posters, a visit and dinner at the Halve Maan Brewery and an excursion with a boat trip in the historical city centre of Bruges, that has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage.

From Girl with a Pearl Earring to warship Mary Rose

Some of the most interesting talks included the presentation by Dr Abbie Vandivere from The Hague about the analysis of the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring (Johannes Vermeer, approx. 1665) and the difficult conservation of the remains of the warship Mary Rose (warship of the English navy under the command of King Henry VIII, sank in 1545) by Dr Eleanor Schofield from the Mary Rose Trust/Imperial College. Another interesting topic was addressed by Dr Lucia Toniolo who gave a talk on the conservation and monitoring issues of historical architecture, also addressing the hazard of climate change. However, with four days and three parallel oral sessions filled with presentations by the top scientists and conservators of the world, it is almost impossible to highlight all of the interesting and inspiring talks.

The highlights of our recent results

Also, TechnArt 2019 was the conference, where the attendance by our Cultural Heritage group members was the highest! Anu presented her poster „Analysis of resinous materials“, where ATR-FT-IR, SEM-EDS, GC-MS and ESI-FT-ICR-MS methods were combined for the analysis of the embalming materials obtained from two human mummies originating from Egypt and now exhibited at the University of Tartu Art Museum. Pilleriin presented her poster „Attenuated total reflectance and reflectance approaches for analysis of textile fibres with FT-IR spectroscopy“. This study showed, that both mentioned approaches are suitable and very useful methods for the identification of natural and synthetic fibres. Eliise presented her poster „Comparison of derivatization methods for the quantitative gas chromatographic analysis of oils“ where four widely used derivatization methods for the analysis of heritage samples were compared on the basis of absolute quantification.

Overall, TechnArt 2019 gave the members of our Cultural Heritage group the possibility to introduce their scientific work results, hear the inspiring lectures and have fruitful discussions in the magical historic city of Bruges.

13^th biennial conference of Infrared & Raman User Group, shortly IRUG, was for the first time ever held in Sydney, Australia in a beautiful Art Gallery of New South Wales. IRUG conferences are gathering people using IR and Raman spectroscopy for the analysis of cultural heritage, architecture, and forensic materials. This year 101 people were attending, including Dr Signe Vahur and PhD student Pilleriin Peets from our group. Pilleriin was also introducing her results in analyzing textile fibres with IR spectroscopy in an oral presentation. Development of methods for the analysis of various textiles using ATR- and reflectance FT-IR spectroscopy turned out to be very relevant: throughout all three days, many people approached to discuss the topic, ask questions and advice or to make contacts for later cooperation. We were also very glad that conference participants were interested in our ATR-FT-IR spectral database of cultural heritage and conservation materials, available here.
Three days were filled with a wide range of interesting presentations from analysis of Aboriginal Australian pigments and identification of contents from the coffin of a 2500-year-old Egyptian mummy Mer-Neith-it-es to investigations of cultural heritage materials using neutron techniques. Besides the analysis of traditional pigments, organic pigments, especially synthetic organic pigments and their use in art were discussed (oral presentation by Dr Suzanne Lomax and Dr Steven Saverwyns). Another very interesting and thought-provoking presentation was done by Dr Gregory Smith from Indianapolis Museum of Art. He discussed the difficulties in getting accurate standard reference materials in the field of cultural heritage analysis. His results showing how many false materials can be found on the market (and not only vendors like Kremer Pigmente, but also providers like Sigma Aldrich) were very surprising.
All in all, IRUG 13 conference offered three full days of interesting presentations, a lot of knowledge and useful tips for further research and a pleasant atmosphere with excellent company.

On 26-29th March three members of the UT Analytical chemistry group – Eliise, Signe and Pilleriin – attended the conference inArt 2018 (3rd International Conference on Innovation in Art Research and Technology). The conference was held in a small, yet beautiful town of Parma in Italy.

The aim of the conference was to bring together chemists, physicists, geologists, art historians, conservators, archaeologists, etc. to create a wide community and a mutual environment for a fruitful discussion. Four days were filled with wide-ranging presentations, museum visits and interesting discussions with other scientist from the same scientific fields. The work of our cultural heritage group was also introduced with both oral and poster presentations.

On the left picture you can see Eliise standing next to her poster about the comparison of derivatization methods for GC-MS analysis of binding materials in oil paints. The results of this work are going to be published soon.

On the right picture is Pilleriin presenting her work on textile dye analysis. This work has already been submitted.

On May 02, 2017, the first day of the Technart 2017 conference (Bilbao, Spain) doctoral student Pilleriin Peets from UT Analytical Chemistry group made a presentation Identification and classification of textile fibres using ATR‐FT‐IR spectroscopy with chemometric methods (Photo on the left).

The presentation outlines the recent results by Pilleriin in creating the method for quick, easy and non-destructive classification and semi-quantitative analysis of textiles using ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy combined with chemometric data analysis methods.

She investigated altogether 89 individual textile materials – Wool, Silk, Cotton, Linen, Cellulose acetate, Lyocell/Tenzel, Viscose, Polyester fibre, Polyamide fibre, Polyacrylic fibre, Elastane and their different combinations – and created a discrimination/classification model using principal component analysis (Image on the right).

As a side-product of this work, a collection of ATR-FT-IR spectra of textile materials containing one or two different fibres was composed and is deposited in the Supplementary data of the paper that she recently published: P. Peets et al. Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 2017, 173, 175–181.

This collection of ATR-FT-IR spectra helps to identify a different kind of single- and two-component mixed textiles.

Technart conference series is a premier scientific forum dedicated to applying analytical techniques in the field of art and cultural heritage.