A late, rather obvious but I think unstated thought about the dry mounting
of platinum prints.
Many vintage Pt prints were dry mounted. A contributory factor to this is of
course that they were generally printed on machine coated paper. For cost
reasons this would normally be trimmed to pretty close to the negative size,
leaving only narrow borders. Also, the papers used were generally fairly low
to moderate in weight. Both factors meant that unmounted prints were
susceptible to physical damage.
Most hand coated prints I have seen of recent production are made on fairly
heavy watercolour paper. They generally have margins of at least several
inches, and so can stand almost any amount of handling without damage whilst
unmounted.
Peter Marshall
Pictures on Fixing Shadows: ----------- http://fermi.clas.virginia.edu/~ds8s
Future Press and elsewhere... E-Mail: petermarshall@cix.compulink.co.uk