The Impressed Image

Blah ! .....04/00

My current demented ramblings.......
for previous outbursts click here

'Restoration', 'Cleaning Prints' and all that Hooey....

If you are a professional art restorer, museum curator or similar; take a tranquilliser and lie down if you intend to read further. When this subject last came up on Prints-L it caused apoplexy and most of us amateur print boilers were labelled philistines, mountebanks, despoilers of art and no better than cheap forgers.

Before I horrify you with what I get up to and my helpful hints and tips, you had better have some idea of my ideological stance and views:

The majority of artists from time immemorial have produced work with the hope that it would be decorative, give pleasure, provoke thought and be disseminated amongst the masses, preferably with some remuneration and if they were lucky, critical recognition. Most was intended to be stuck on a wall and dumped when the novelty wore off or fashion changed. Only a tiny percentage of artists work reaches the 'masterpiece' category, and very few anticipated their output to be used as an investment opportunity or locked up in the bowels of sundry great and good institutions.

Almost all artwork will undergo deterioration and degradation with time, and the resultant effect is to diminish and obscure what the artist originally intended. In prints in particular, it is essentially the vehicle on which the image is placed that causes the problem. Ink, being essentially varnish containing primarily light fast pigments is pretty robust. Unlike the restoration of oil painting where almost anything seems to be acceptable, tinkering with artwork on paper seems paradoxically unacceptable, despite the fact we are talking about treating damaged paper, and not the art itself.

I can see nothing wrong with trying to remedy problems in paper to restore the original appearance of the image it carries to that which the artist originally intended. Oh, I know there will be those of you out there who consider this heresy and would prefer to retain the 'original' moth eaten, foxed, water-stained, mat-burnt and creased qualities of your prints, but I'm afraid you can count me out. Discoloured paper is damaged paper. I concede that any remedial tinkering may cause more chemical damage and possibly reduce the life span of the paper itself, but everything I have read on the subject makes various assumptions and conjectures based on accelerated ageing tests that make yet more guesses at what complex processes take place in the degradation of cellulose. I think I would rather have something that looked as the artist intended that lasted for 200yrs than something that looked awful and was a pale imitation of the original that lasted for 400yrs. Who says art should last for ever anyway? Maybe it's better that it doesn't.

Most of what I possess is in the cheap end of the market, and frankly for some things it was either 'restoration' or the waste basket as far as I was concerned. I'm not talking about cleaning things for the sake of it, but remedial action where the state of the image was sufficiently poor to seriously compromise the original artists intentions. Sometimes you HAVE to do something to prevent things getting worse! Paper is pretty simple stuff, just cellulose fibres of different lengths and composition dependent on the organic material of origin, squished and boiled up with a bit of goo to hold it together and stiffen it. Intrinsically it is fairly stable if kept at a constant sensible temperature and humidity and in chemically inert surroundings. It's the added insults that make things difficult: surface dirt, lignin from mounts and backing boards, dessication, damp, creasing, fungal stains, air borne pollutants, UV light, tears, worm holes, biro marks, greasy fingers, abrasions - all contribute to a complex soup of physical and chemical damage.

So, what do I do?

Well I soak every print I obtain in a bucket of 50% household lavatory cleaner for 6 hours till nice and white, put it on the lawn overnight to dry, repair the tears with sellotape, iron it nice and flat with a household steam iron on high heat, then touch up the defects with india ink or coloured crayons if it's a coloured print, then re-do the signature in biro so it's easier to read. Voila - one perfectly rehabilitated print.... ready to be sold to an unsuspecting but grateful public as it's far too good now to keep.

Honest !

I have actually seen prints that have benefited from this 'restoration'. I too, have done some dreadful things through ignorance and haste, but you soon learn from your mistakes, and if you are the one that's paying for it, you learn very, very quickly.....

Some tips, learnt the hard way.

First - A list of DONT'S !

1. Don't touch anything that's expensive with a bargepole and NEVER volunteer to do anything for a friend. It will be a disaster, and anything that goes wrong will be visible to your eyes forever, even if no-one else cannot see it. Get an expert.

2. Don't clean things just because they are a bit discoloured. Many prints from the 1850-1950 period were printed on paper that was ALREADY old and discoloured!

3. If a defect doesn't detract from the overall image, DON'T touch it!

4. Defects covered by matting should really be ignored. It's nice to have an original full deckle edged sheet, but if the margins are awful and ragged, consider trimming - it may be safer to do this than risk tears extending.

5. Think twice about touching rich velvety drypoints - this effect is easily damaged and they need extreme care.

6. The same goes for large areas of delicate plate tone that can easily vanish even with delicate treatment.

7. My local supplier sold me a wonderful sock thing full of powdered eraser to remove surface dirt - you squeeze some powder out and gently rub it over the paper. IT IS A MENACE! DO NOT USE ERASERS IN ANY FORM ON PRINTS! - on rough fibrous (especially Japanese) paper it scours and abrades the surface, it lifts plate tone, removes signatures, and ruins drypoints. Do not believe what anyone else says about them! You have been warned!

8. Be VERY careful with thin Japanese papers - the off coloured coarse fibrous ones are pretty bomb-proof, but the softer 'Hosho' types become alarmingly like blotting paper when wet. Always use some sort of mesh support.

9. Chine Applique/Colle has always worried me, but surprisingly the overlaid tissue thin paper has never lifted when wet. Maybe I've just been lucky.

10. Tears extend dreadfully easily when wet. Take extreme care.

11. Never try to 'spot clean', particularly on dry paper. It will stick out like a sore thumb. Always immerse the whole print if you attempt to clean anything.

12. View any commercially sold 'wonder cleaner' with extreme suspicion. Try it out on something worthless first. Use it much more diluted than recommended and extend immersion times to avoid disaster. Most are far too fierce in the concentrations recommended.

13. No matter what you do, most signatures in ink will fade. Cleaning these prints is a choice you will have to make for yourself. Reconstituting the signature afterwards will be a very obvious piece of fakery if you attempt it.

Well, that's most of the dont's, what do I actually do?

A. Cleaning:

14. If it's minor soiling, cockling, creasing etc, just a dip in slightly warm water for a while may do.

15. Some advocate an afternoon soaking in sunlight as a 'non-chemical' cleaner. It works but takes ages and I'm sure there is plenty of chemical activity afoot due to UV light, ozone and sundry other ions in tap water that are activated into a bleaching effect. Don't kid yourself - this is chemical cleaning too. This always assumes you see the sun a lot - not very helpful for us in the UK I'm afraid!

16. For most else I use something that my picture framing supplier sold called 'Restorit'. They sold it mail order till EU regulations on transporting chemicals forced them to ship it in containers more appropriate to shifting nuclear waste. Being uneconomic they no longer supply it. However, it turns out it's just Hydrogen Peroxide (30vol or 9%) mixed 5:1 with Ammonia (15%). Both are easily obtainable but in slightly different concentrations, so you will have to adjust the ratio accordingly. Once mixed it doesn't keep long, but is cheap enough to discard.

17. The original instructions (neat for spot cleaning foxing etc and slightly diluted for soaking) were a joke - the basic mix needs diluting with tepid water by 10:1 for light staining and 5:1 for dreadful things. Even then it often fizzes alarmingly and can occasionally lift loose ink from very over-printed areas, but luckily with no obvious harm done. Just chuck in another litre or so of cold water if you get frightened by the seething cauldron before you.

18. Within 15-60 minutes all but the most stubborm mat burns, foxing and dirt will have gone. Stains always look darker when wet and this solution will continue to act as it dries, so stop well before all sign has gone or you will lose the natural tone of the paper. Most things I have cleaned still have some sign of faint mat burn or toning which I am quite happy to put up with as it makes them look unrestored.

19. You will never completely shift staining on the reverse of a print from wooden or poor quality card backing without bleaching the front unacceptably. Don't even try to do it.

20. Watch like a hawk for plate tone lifting if there are large expanses of delicate inking. If there are any signs at all, fish the print out and give up.

21. This solution needs no rinsing and theoretically becomes inert with drying and leaves no residues. In years of use I have never had any problems. I may open my boxes in 40yrs time to find a percentage of my prints are fine dust, but I doubt it, and this solution is considerably less noxious than some other things advocated.

22. Prints with very dense tide marks around the edge of the mat due to lignin and acid in the exposed mat edge are a real problem. I usually soak as above till the worst is gone and the print clean but not bleached, then lay it wet on a sheet of glass and pour water briefly over to remove most of the active solution. Using a large soft brush I apply 5:1 diluted stock solution selectively to the remaining burn. This needs doing repeatedly at 1-2 minute intervals till things look right. If the rest is drying out, douse with water. Take care - you do not wan't to swap brown tide mark for a white one! Don't be tempted to use a stronger mix to save time.

23. With any of the above, if in doubt always stop too soon, dry, then reassess - you can always do it again. If you go too far you will have to engage in amateur forgery (more of anon) to redeem the situation.

24. Coloured inks are USUALLY water and cleaning fast, but take nothing for granted and be very careful. Drypoint fizzes alamingly and I think the structure of the inking reflects the delicate raised burr of the plate and is equally fragile. They never really look quite the same after cleaning - similar but not quite as bad as the difference between a pristine rich black drypoint and one that's been badly handled and poorly stored. Make sure getting rid of the dirt and paper defects is a fair swap.

B. Drying:

25. Buy at least 50 and preferably 100 full sheets of blotting paper. Yes, you heard right, 50-100, NO LESS !

26. A few sheets of glass or board are handy, two sizes; one pair for big prints, say 20x15" and another about half this for smaller ones.

27. You need something heavy to press things - big books, bricks, anything handy will do. I have a nice big bit of reject marble tombstone for grinding ink that does the job nicely, with several wooden boxes full of lathe bits to add if I'm feeling particularly brutal. Remember - a big area needs a big squash to get the same pounds per square inch as a little one.

28. You are not forcing moisture out, only trying to stop the print cockling, so don't go wild. You don't want to lose the plate mark or any other natural embossing from the printing. In practice this is hard to do as you will come nowhere near the original printing pressure unless you engage in some bizarre semi-industrial activities.

29. Fish print out, allow to drip dry. Lie face up on a couple of sheets of blotto. Cover with two more. Apply gentle hand pressure to remove most of moisture. Repeat with the reversed blotto pieces to use the drier sides or another patch of the sheet if print is small. Rub over the sandwich to smooth print out for a few seconds.

30. Be gentle to start with as with heavily inked prints a bit of ink may come adrift initially, which although alarming is usually surplus to requirements and is hardly ever noticeable.

31. Once you have repeated this several times with new dry patches/pieces of blotto the print will be fairly dry and much easier to handle. Only brief contact with the blooto is needed - less than a minute per change.

32. Time for squashing - make a sandwich with print in middle, 2-3 sheets of blotto each side, then boards/glass and finally weight down. Leave for 5 minutes. Dismantle, replace with new blotto and repeat.

33. Repeat about 7 or 8 times in total, leaving things for maybe 15 minutes then 30 minutes for the last two squashes. The print will be virtually completely dry by then. I used to leave things for hours and do less changes, but I find this accelerated regime of multiple quick changes works far better. It should take no longer than an hour from start to finish.

34. It will still be at risk of cockling if left like this, so to be absolutely certain of a lasting flat finish leave overnight between a couple of sheets of blotto under a light weight such as a book or bit of board.

35. Shuffle up your used and unused sheets of blotto and put them under a weighted board to encourage them to dry flat and leave for a few days. I've been using the same sheets for years. Only the odd one needs throwing away from time to time.

36. Examine your handywork. It doesn't have to be perfect. Don't get obsessed with cleaning just for the sake of it. Can you live with it now? Be honest. Once it's framed you won't notice minor impefections.

37. There may however still be some major problems that tempt you into the realms of art forgery:

C. Nefarious Activities:

38. Glaring chunks of ink missing can be remedied by resort to stiff watercolour and a fine brush, if you feel you have to. You are mad to attempt anything with ink.

39. Any areas of obvious missing plate tone can similarly be filled with a weak watercolour wash of the appropriate tone. There are loads of other things you can get up to with a watercolour box but to be honest it's not worth the effort, hardly necessary and dead easy to spot as it has a matt finish. If things are that bad, seek another copy!

40. Before anyone starts jumping up and down at this advice I would point out that it was not unknown for the artist himself to touch up minor blemishes and printing creases. As long as you are minimising acquired defects and not intent on deliberate deception for monetary gain I am fairly ambivalent about this sort of activity.

41. Everyones preoccupied with signatures - I wonder how many are really genuine and unimproved or strengthened? I've gone over the odd one that has become all but invisible, but it always looks like a forgery to me even if it bears close scrutiny by others. Creating one afresh is naughty and no doubt a hanging offence in the trade.

D. Other Problems:

42. 'Laid Down' Prints. My all time hate. I would happily strangle anyone who does this. Even better is where the front mount is welded to it as well. This is done with dire substandard toxic card that imparts an antique tobacco hue to everything. You can't leave things as the glue, acid and lignin will continue to damage the print.

43. Take a deep breath, half a gallon of warmish 10:1 'Restorit', add print, then go out for the afternoon. Pray fervently on return and see what's happened, The solution will be beer coloured and stink. There will be a mush of peeling cardboard swimming in it. The mount should come adrift with gentle peeling. The print will probably still be quite firmly attached - most stubbornly where the ink is thickest. Loosen round the edges that have lifted with a blunt knife or spatula.

44. Never, EVER, force or pull. Leave longer if necessary, eventually it will lift. Of course they choose the thinnest and most fragile paper to stick down to start with so this can be a real trial of nerves. My high point came with the Wilkinson colour woodcut in Gallery 6. I ended up with 10 assorted seperate pieces of mush like wet toilet paper. I could have wept and nearly gave up. Reassembled the following day whilst still damp on archival repair tissue you could not even see the joins. Almost NOTHING is beyond salvage if you put your mind to it and keep cool.

45. Don't forget there will still be glue on the back of the print. If you try and dry it between blotto you will just succeed in sticking it to something else! Make sure you give it a good scrub with a large soft artists brush whilst immersed to get as much off as possible.

46. Tears are also repairable with Japanese Archival Repair Tissue. Use irregular shaped torn pieces and apply to the back when the print is still slightly damp, then continue drying and pressing. It is almost invisible. The instructions say interleave it, but the bit on the print side, although almost transparent, has a matt finish and stands out against plate tone. Weak or broken through plate marks can be dealt with similarly.

47. If tears extend into the platemark or image you may have to touch up with watercolour, but use a much lighter and weaker mix than you think necessary - the exposed fibres in the tear will take up more pigment than the rest and it will look worse than ever if you are not very careful!

48. Dark blemishes on light areas are impossible to disguise and no matter what you try you will never succeed. All I ever did was make a bad situation worse. You have been warned.

49. Stains or printing on the back of prints that shows through on the front is impossible to hide or remove. Live with it. The collector Kenneth Guichard put his collectors stamp on the back of his prints, adjacent to the platemark, and in lurid green or red indelible ink to prevent theft. Many are visible from the front. Nice one Ken, thanks a million.

50. What do you do about wormholes? Nothing seems very satisfactory. I have spent hours making tiny patches from offcuts of the print, 'feathering' them with tweezers to fit exactly in the holes with any paper texture suitably aligned, supporting them from behind with repair tissue, then touching them up with watercolour. They still stand out like divots on a golf course - the Mulready Stone is typical. Any bright ideas??

51. Even quite bad creases respond to a soak and a press. 'Strategy' by Orovida was bought unseen from a major London Auction House who described it verbally as in 'good condition and with no major faults'. It turned out to be as limp as newsprint, had been folded horizontally in four and was torn on all four sides including one into the platemark lower right. Depressed?? You bet. Trimmed, repaired, soaked and pressed my £100 investment is a £500 print on the wall. The tear touching up suffers from the faults listed in 47 but it's good enough for me.

52. Oil, grease and similar stains are beyond me. 'Siberian Tiger' has a stain on the left that defied Lumsdens recommendations (in his Art of Etching). As a result I tried getting a butter stain out of old paper as an experiment. I tried: petrol, diesel, meths, paint thinners, cellulose thinners, watch cleaner, clock cleaner, neat ammonia, alcohol, lighter fuel, bleach, kerosene, plus some toxic medical products pinched from work. No luck. I think you need nasty dry cleaning things, toluene, benzene/pyridine etc. which are poisonous or cause cancer. I'll keep the grease, thanks.

E. Minimal Intervention:

53. Too terrified or just not mad enough to attempt any of the above? Just want to stop the rot? Well acidity in all it's forms is the big killer. Just soaking removes a lot and arrests deterioration. If you want to be more scientific use Calcium Hydroxide solution (4g dissolved in 1 litre; just use the clear bit) - this neutralises the acid and on drying leaves bicarbonate in the paper as a buffer.

54. Dessicated, sun toned very brittle papers can be rejuvenated just by soaking - the pulp fibres swell, size in the paper is reactivated and it often becomes both stronger and more pliable as bonds between the fibres are restablished. This is counter-intuitive as you would imagine that wetting these fragile papers would cause the opposite. It's worth a go.

55. Re-mat with acid-free materials, keep out of direct sunlight, air regularly to discourage mould but don't keep too dry - all will help stabilise things. Some modern acid-free cards have inbuilt buffering ability and pores to trap noxious gases and pollutants etc.

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Well that's all the wisdom that comes to mind for now. I AM NOT encouraging you to attempt any of this and don't blame me if it all goes dreadfully wrong. It will, hopefully, prevent you making some of the dreadful mistakes that I have.

Remember, theres always some nice conservation person out there who will take the pain and worry out of it if you are willing to cross their palms with silver. Having tried these things myself, I can say they are a brave bunch and worthy of respect and probably good value for money. Me? I'm a meanie and like a challenge so I will continue with my hair raising DIY projects!

And no....I have not, and have no intention of, flooding the market with doctored prints, so any worried museum curators out there can rest easy!

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