Posted by Eric Mandelbaum on September 16, 2000 at 21:25:38:
The topic of repairs has come up several times on this page, with the pros and cons hotly debated. Personally, I am in the "leave well enough alone" camp, accepting damage as part of the age, but have read several supremely self-confident articles on line recently that have made me wonder. My questions:
1) What are the long-term effects of bleaching a print? The articles I saw pictured before-and- after prints that would make one think the procedure was a complete success. But what happens (if anything) in the long run?
A story: I remember buying a wonderful early Kunisada for a song at a gallery in Japan. When I asked why it was so low, the owner told me because it had been bleached by a previous owner. Over time, as I collected other prints of this period, the whiteness of this one did come to stand out as startling and unnatural, and it is harder to appreciate the print. Are there other effects though, that the gallery owner was referring to?
2) I would like to ask the same question about gluing (even with rice glue) scraps or am acid-free backing to the back of a print. It might look good for a time, but I have seen prints with browning and foxing around the area of an old repair. Is this just because someone used bad glue, or do these repairs compromise a print?
Could someone with more knowledge of conservation please let me know about these issues?