jewelia (jewelia@erols.com)
Sun, 21 Feb 1999 18:38:42 -0800
yeah, i like your idea: "take the worst evils out of it"--the problem would
be--and this off course is true for cotton or rag (same thing) that we are
dealing with cells--and stuff has to migrate in and out and there can be
problems crossing any boundary--i could tell you some stories! but, paper
jewelia!, with sulphite they are pretty weak structures at this point--that
was sort of the necessity of the papermaking process and partly why these
papers can be made very smooth but still crispy.
the washing itself won't whiten them i guess unless you do something that
would bleach them white or leave them in a cold mountain creek for about 2
weeks as in Japan-- and yes they can be whitened up as in procedures used by
conservators in restoration--i think i have some stuff around on that i
could dig up if of interest. as far as i know, the main advantage of edta
is it sort of loosens things up so they wash out a bit better -- i guess
this makes the cell swell up? i understand hypo is used commercially as a
bleach and edta probably too (brain strain setting in) but i don't know if
our concentrations will bleach much with a normal process but if left "too
long" it would but of course this treatment also may attack an existing
image as in excess fixing and clearing??? i'm sure there are some expert
photo chemists who can confirm/deny the details.
anyway--get this--i mean the finest of papers in the world--many might judge
this so -- are those japanese papers--often "wrongly" called rice papers.
these days a lot of kozo--one of the three fibers used primarily in washi
(J. Paper), is part sulfite and some traditional kozo papers are pure
sulfite these days--seems the old papermakers don't seem to get too upset
about it at all--they've used lyes and other ggod things to break down wood
fibers to the point of beating them with a stick (you must chant and do this
with a certain rhytym to have the goddesses on your side) for more than a
millenia. sulphite seems to make perfect sense to them and well lozo is
hard to find these days, expensive, and a lot of work. btw: one of the
traditional eastern ways of bleaching pulp is to throw it out in the snow in
the sun for a few weeks--maybe you might do that with some of those darkened
prints??? (a giggle or two would be appropriate)
stay tuned next week to the list for the rest of the story: enquiring minds
want to know---is it really true that when rags were scarce in the northeast
some yank who owned a paper mill imported a boat load of detombed egyptian
mummies and unwound them to use their wrappings to make rag paper?
may your fibers beat sweetly and your gums shine bright sap green
jewelia margueritta cameroon
i'm a mitsumata person (if i remember right)
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