A Review on Organic Additives Used in Historic Indian Murals

Abstract

The scientific identification of organic additives in plaster and mortars has become an appropriate principle in the preparation of compatible repair material. Besides the need to characterise inorganic components, the conservation of mural art is facilitated by the unabridged documentation of organic components particularly mixed in ancient decorative mud/lime plasters support. The review addresses the influence of organic additives in the historic artworks and analytical methods used for their investigation. The paper has considered, the various plant-based organic additives recommended by ancient Indian texts like the Vishnudharmottara purana, Samaranga sutradhara, Silparatna etc., which have been documented and reported. With regard to the mentioned historical texts, plant-based products such as fermented juice, gum, fibres, straw, husk, resin etc., were used as organic additives for the preparation of wall plaster which provides disparate attributes to the plaster thus making it crack free, durable, antioxidant, antibacterial and insect-resistant. Furthermore, the recently reported destructive and non-destructive characterisation techniques based on chromatography, spectroscopy, ionization, and microscopy have also been described here. The mentioned techniques contribute as a fundamental tool to identify proteins, polysaccharides, fatty acids, resinous materials, starch, plant product etc., extracted from the mud/lime plasters and mortars.