Microscopy. Identification of textile fibres

Описание: More info at:
http://chsopensource.org/microscopy-f...


A polar­iz­ing micro­scope is a quick method to iden­tify tex­tiles such as paint­ing can­vases. To iden­tify com­mon his­tor­i­cal tex­tile such as cot­ton, hemp, wool, silk and flax you have to look at cer­tain fea­tures. For exam­ple, cot­ton is eas­ily rec­og­nized because its fibers show a char­ac­ter­is­tic twisted shape while hemp, jute and flax are pretty straight. Flax and jute are rec­og­niz­able because of their nodes. Jute also has tapered ends.

Ref­er­ences about polar­iz­ing microscopy, prepa­ra­tion of slides and tex­tile micro­scopic exam­i­na­tion are [1, 2, 3, 4]. Ref­er­ence [5] is an inter­est­ing paper on the use of dif­fer­ent tex­tiles in can­vases in French paint­ing between 17th and 20th cen­tury. It shows that in the 18th cen­tury was mostly used hemp then in the 19th cen­tury came linen (flax) or mixed tex­tiles of linen and hemp and even­tu­ally in 20th cen­tury cot­ton. It is a use­ful paper also in order to have an insight into meth­ods to char­ac­ter­ize tex­tiles. A Ref­er­ence specif­i­cally on Eng­lish can­vases is [6].

This is a video made to illus­trate some fibers’ fea­tures as seen under a polar­iz­ing microscope.

This is my flow­chart for prepar­ing a tex­tile iden­ti­fi­ca­tion report.