Re: Van Dyke question(s)
Judy,
I have a few lovely violet to red tinted VDs that I toned with gold
before fixing some 20 years ago. Some of them have been shown but
most have been stored in the dark and they all seem to remain
unchanged. As far as I can remember, I was using Nelson's formula
because it contained "hypo" which darkened the tones whereas other
gold toner formulas left them much lighter. It was hard to control
though, since the strength of hypo decreased with each print. I've
had very little experience with Clerc's.
Seems to me that the consensus is that VDs are very permanent if
properly processes. Since the silver is on the surface of the paper,
it is subject to environmental damages. Problems is: what's "proper"
processing? Sandy has testes a number of steps to ensure proper
fixing and washing but "weird results" still showed up, even when the
silver was all replaced by pd.
Sam
On Jan 14, 2008, at 11:52 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:
A friend has a commission for a series of prints in Van Dyke Brown,
which she loves... but my experience with a beautiful VDB given to
me by someone else and left out in normal living-room light
(fluorescent, however) is that it faded noticeably -- in about 10
years. Though meanwhile I have a VDB on glass by Galina that's been
hanging in a window for several years and shows no change at all...
I figure, however, that it must have been toned.
So I told her that:
1. The prints wouldn't be archival unless they were toned, and,
2. Gold toning wouldn't seriously change the color (which was much
of the appeal).
But then I thought, it's at least 10 years -- maybe more -- since I
gold toned a VDB. Do I *really* remember the color? So I said,
I'll ask The List... "they'll know."
I'm also going to give her Liam's wonderful article about "Make
your own gold chloride" from P-F, though she said she doesn't have
any gold teeth or old wedding rings tucked away. (Possibly a gold
coin or two, tho my guess would be that the coin is worth more than
the equivalent amount of gold dust would cost.)
Anyway, comments on toning VDB for archivality, et al., would be
much appreciated... (I also toned VDB with palladium toner, which
gave a rich deep black, but this quest is for the beautiful VDB
brown. Would selenium work? Can you still get selenium?)
TIA,
Judy
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