You might be considering the use of an adhesive like what was used in the original installation. It seems to have survived for 100 years or so. If so, here is a brief discussion about the adhesives available in Japan in the early part of the 20th C.
Pretty much every household in Japan right up to the post war period used to keep two kinds of plant based adhesive (mucilage) around for various household repair tasks. For heavy lifting a strong adhesive called nori was cooked up from wheat starch into a glue like the wallpaper paste we are familiar with in the west. It would be used for applying and repairing the paper on shoji screens and probably for pasting photos in the family album. Another less well known but long used Japanese mucilage is called funori. Funori is the term for both starch bearing seaweeds that grow only in the sea of Japan, and for the starchy size/adhesive extracted from it. Funori was and still is used with washi (Japanese paper) in a poultice fashion for dry cleaning silk fabric, as a size for blocking kimonos before assembly, and as a less strong adhesive for many delicate tasks. My guess is that 13 mm butterfly wings fall into the delicate category. Dried seaweed of the type that produces the adhesive called funori can be purchased from conservation supply houses like Talas. Simply cook it up and strain out the plant fibre and lumps to make a yellowish starchy adhesive like the one used a hundred years ago for your wings. Another option we have developed from the same seaweed is a more refined and crystal clear version of this same adhesive called TRI-Funori. Filtration technology has improved over the past hundred years and by simple filtration with no additives or bleaches, we are able to remove all the color from the extract and retain the polysaccharide starch that makes it adhesive. The freeze dried result of this is a new and useful iteration of the starch. TRI-Funori is also available from Talas or on line at www.TRI-Funori.com. ****** Unsubscribe by sending a message to [email protected] Archives through August 2016 at http://cool.conservation-us.org/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/ Archives from September 2016 onward at https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
