>I have recently color-xeroxed my polaroid transfers onto watercolor paper.
Does anyone know the archival quality of this process?<
Henry Wilhelm has tested the material among others and has published the data in
1993 (The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs, ISBN 0-911515-00-3):
He predicted 7.8 years of display until 20% of the least stable pigment had
disappeared, if the print is shown uncovered, 25 years if it's covered with glas
and 40 years if the prints are covered with an UF-3 ultraviolet filter. In the
dark the may last hundreds of years. (He needed more than 730 days at 144 F and
45 Perc. RH for a loss of 20%.
But note that this test has been developed for chromogenic prints and
predictions like this may be of doubtfull quality for other processes. Paper
quality, binder stability and abrasion resistance were not tested, but may be a
much bigger problem than with conventional photographs.
Klaus Pollmeier