[alt-photo] casein

[Christina Anderson]

Dear All,

I"ve been working on casein research over the last number of months as you know (with a hiatus for a month's travel in May). I'm about done the literature part. Someone on the list asked me to share so here it is.

Next week I go to Eastman House to complete the research in old journals of the time. Very excited to do that, but may not find much is my guess. We'll see.

If anyone knows of alt happenings in Rochester NY the 19th through the 30th I'd love to know.

I do have a question for those of you who do carbon; Mr. J. R. Johnson was the patenter in 1870, and I think if I am not mistaken he made a commercial carbon paper. Part of me wonders if anyone has checked casein as an ingredient in any of these manufactured papers, including Fresson. It is so fine grained and soooo stable. I am still wondering why it didn't take off, or, if it did. I know it was suggested as a replacement for collodion and albumen in glass plate negatives as early as 1858, it was suggested to replace albumen in 1916 because at that time eggs were expensive and scarce. All of these not casein-pigment printing but casein-silver emulsion.

Anyway, I had reviewed all of Franklin Enos' archives at the University of Kentucky, Louisville a year or so ago. Took notes. Come to find out, a lot of those great notes were summed up in the July/August 1987 AVISO newsletter of the New Pictorialist Society. I don't know if the society still exists, or if Theisen is alive still?

I got down to research in making homemade casein. To date I had used two forms of readymade casein, Schmincke and Kremer. Also casein from powder, both ammonium and sodium forms (don't consider those "homemade"). I had yet to tackle homemade casein from milk, etc., thinking it too putzy and didn't want to work with ammonia fumes or glacial acetic acid. But I bit the bullet and did so because I wanted to see if there was a difference in performance between homemade and store-bought.

Come to find out, making homemade casein is a no-brainer! Goodness. Why was I so afraid? Like all of these alt processes, they are way less complex than one would have us believe.

With powdered milk and vinegar (tried glacial acetic, citric acid powder, and vinegar in side by side tests and even exposed all three solutions side by side with no difference, all work fine so plain old vinegar is my choice) the curd forms immediately and is ready in under an hour. Didn't go out and buy cheesecloth--just used a knee-high nylon to drain off the whey.

Then with a tad of janitorial strength ammonia (which is 10%, but regular household ammonia is undetermined less than 3%-10% and would work just fine) it is amazing how quickly the curd liquifies into a pearly clear solution that...yes....looks just like the casein in Schmincke and Kremer.

The easiest by far was taking a container of cottage cheese, rinsing off the liquid and plopping some ammonia on top. THAT took only an hour to go into solution. I used it right away.

Enos recommends 60-75cc of 10% ammonia to 2 oz. cottage cheese. I started with just 50ml to 8 oz (to see how much is actually needed to dissolve the curd first) and it went into solution perfectly. However, that proportion is way too thick like the Schmincke gooey thickness. Enos liked his casein on the thin side, so I realized varying the amount of ammonia in the  cottage cheese would supply all sorts of dilutions and is the easiest because one only needs cottage cheese and ammonia, and could even rinse it in a strainer and forego the nylon.

This is VERY cheap. And no need to order casein.

So far just using powdered pigments because I want to avoid making judgments on casein with any modicum of gum arabic involved. With just casein, there is no gloss.

I am finding casein shorter scale than gum in all my tests. Need to investigate that further. If I vary the pot di strength it still doesn't matter...several stops at best of DR compared to gum of 4-6.

That's it for now.

Chris



Christina Z. Anderson
christinaZanderson.com