2025 Poster Session

Conservators at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) recently came across a mysterious treatment material referred to as “Flecto” while they were re-treating a number of enameled jewelry and decorative arts objects in the collection. This material was used at the VMFA most frequently as a tinted fill material on damaged enamelwork. A search of the conservation literature returned almost no references to Flecto, which is the name of a company that produced paints, wood finishes, and floor coating systems until they were purchased in 1998 by Rust-oleum. Fortunately, a photocopy of an original product label was present in one of the object folders, revealing the full product name to be “Flecto Seamless Clear Plastic,” an acrylic resin in xylene. As a substantial amount of decanted “Flecto” remains in the lab’s chemical storage, additional analysis and accelerated aging tests were carried out to more fully characterize the material and its aging properties and to determine the potential long-term effects on the objects treated. A survey was also sent out to the conservation community in order to gauge how frequently and in what contexts this product has been used in the conservation field. We hope the results of this study will prove useful to other conservators and museum professionals who come across this historic conservation material.