Welcome.

The fact that you read this blog shows that you are involved or interested in collection care and safeguarding cultural heritage. So you are just the public we are trying to reach: from professionals to private people interested in the Art of Conservation.

“We did not only inherit our cultural heritage from our ancestors, we are also borrowing it from our children”. This free interpretation of the quote “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our childeren” and found originally in a slightly other version in a book of Wendell Berry:”The Unforeseen Wilderness: an Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge”, is what it is all about. A responsibility and respect for our past, the delight of enjoying much beauty and the moral obligation to pass this on to future generations so that they can, with their own eyes, see where past, present an future merge together.

Maybe you will ask yourself “Why another blog/site about conservation?”. There are lots of good sites around from all kinds of organizations concerned with collection care of cultural heritage. So why this extra blog/site?

As co-developer and teacher of the “Cultural Heritage Staff Training”, organized by the Flemish Department of Education in Belgium I noticed that people have a constant and even growing need for knowledge about the “how” and “why” of deterioration processes, composition of art and cultural objects and assessments of materials and techniques. These are also the questions I continuously have. Therefore my aim with this blog is to provide more insight in the underlying science and scientific laws governing the survival of art and heritage.

In the 25 years I have been professionally involved in the field of conservation I have realized that safeguarding art and cultural heritage objects are a very complex matter comparable to a 3-dimensional building. Here we can consider all aspects of conservation as being in the horizontal plane, vertically linked to each other by the pillars of science as physics, chemistry, biology, climatology and a score of other disciplines working and interacting globally.

Conservation is not only a scientific and technical discipline, it is also an “Art”. For a good conservation empathy with a collection object or building is absolutely necessary. The feeling for the object, its composition, its history, its properties are a conditio sine qua non to achieve an adequate conservation. A boy of 7 years old, for whom I repaired one of his favourite books, called me his book doctor. This is one of the most beautiful compliments I ever received. Taking care of books is like taking care of people. Feeling out the patient or the object go beyond the necessary scientific discipline. Conservation is more than a profession, it is a way of life.

Want to know more about me? Just look at “About” or click on the following link www.dezilverenpasser.be

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