Sometimes the paper of a print in any medium looks too white and I want to
more or less "antique" it, or even make it look yellow, like the look of
dichromate before clearing. I've used a tea bath for this, but it's not
exactly the color I want, and I suspect it fades in time.
I've thought of dyeing the paper to suit, but wonder about archivality. I
have enough of the old Kodak dye transfer dyes to make a few trials and I
see now that the Kremer catalog lists certain "powdered stains" as
"successors of annaline dyes, soluble in dentaured alcohol" which it says
are "very lightfast."
I'm not sure how this would be applied to paper, but before inquiring
further thought I'd ask some of the conservation police on this list (;-)
if these dyes are OK, or big mistake??? Any advice would be
appreciated. ("OK" in my book would be if they last fairly well for a fairly
long time with fairly little change.)
Judy