Posted by Dave Bull on August 15, 2000 at 19:50:44:
In Reply to: pasted down Hasui & Restoration posted by Anders Rikardson on August 14, 2000 at 03:11:07:
Lot of viewpoints on this 'do it yourself' aspect of caring for prints ... May I toss in another technique to the mix?
I recently acquired a folio of Hiroshige designs (20 prints from an 'Edo Meisho' series), and these had all been laid down onto cardboard. The prints themselves were on quite thin paper, and were starting to pick up toning and staining from the backing material. They had to be removed, or they would be destroyed.
I did it without immersing the prints in water, but by slipping each sheet into a stack of moist newsprint (well moistened the night before, to allow it to become evenly damp and smooth). After a full day of settling in to the proper level of moist softness, the backing sheets easily came away, and I then dried the prints with the same method I use for new prints (air drying to remove most of the raw moisture, immediately followed by pressing between sheets of illustration board to hold them flat while the final moisture is drawn out ...).
I'm not going to 'weigh-in' on whether or not such work should be undertaken by the collector, but simply want to point out that there are other ways of removing prints from backings _without_ total immersion in water. With this method, the print is only actually returned to the same level of dampness that it encountered during its manufacture (woodblock prints are made on damp paper). I can also mention that the embossings in the sheets survived this 'surgery', something I doubt would be the case if they had become completely saturated.
This method is not without dangers, as it sometimes happens that a sheet _seems_ to be coming off easily, but will then 'catch' on a patch of stronger glue, and it is at such places that prints can easily be damaged. You have to have a good feel for just how far you can go. Practicing on junk prints first is a good idea ...
Dave Bull