Programme details

The Save Art project concerns the elimination of insects which are destroying our cultural heritage. Insect pest on works of art, being books, paintings, textiles, stuffed animals are a catastrophe in museums, libraries and private collection.

Cultural Heritage Damaged by Insects

The Biblioteca Marciana of Venice contains a million modern books, more than 14,000 manuscripts and a very high quantity of incunabula, important books printed in the 16th century.
In 1996, they became aware of the fact that insects were damaging some books, resulting in holes, disintegration of the binding, and in the book itself. This deterioration is typical of the larvae of the furniture beetle ,Anobium punctatum. The anobium is the most common parasite of all infestation agents. Its voracious larva attacks books, furniture and paintings. There are also many tiny insects which cause irreversible damage by eating away organic matter such as paper, parchment, leather, fabric, and of course wood.

VELOXY Technique

As part of the Save Art project, a device, named VELOXY, standing for "Very Low Oxygen" was developed. With it, an extremely low oxygen level can be obtained inside custom-made wrappings used to treat the works of arts.
The device simply extracts the air from the wrapping and gradually replaces it with filtered nitrogen, which is brought to optimal levels of temperature and humidity.
It takes from a few minutes to a few hours - depending on the size of the object to be treated - to bring the oxygen level inside the wrapping from 20% to less than 2 tenths of a percent. Excluding oxygen eliminates all the insects - be they eggs, larvae, pupae or adults, since they all need oxygen to survive.
The device is simple to use and anybody can do it. It is easy to carry around and can be taken to the place where the works of art are. Its main asset is that it is non-toxic and non-polluting.

Application of VELOXY

The Biblioteca Marciana of Venice treated half a million books. They were not all infested, but to eliminate the risk of contamination, we decided to act in nearly all the library premises.
With an operating cost 80% lower than toxic treatments, Veloxy can also treat paintings, wooden objets d’art, furniture, fabric, and of course the stuffed animals from the museums of Natural History which should avoid parasites like the plague.

Conclusion

Financed by the European Commission, the Save Art project gathered expertise from Italy, England, Spain and Sweden.
But its findings concern the whole world. Simple, economical and fast, Veloxy is a revolution not only for museum curators, librarians and archivists but also for private collectors of ancient precious objects.