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gum pigment, etc.





On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Andre Fuhrmann wrote:
> ...  Some vendors
> are more helpful than others with labelling their products.  Seems that
> www.kremer-pigmente.de is among the more helpful ones (they have a shop in
> NYC).

And it's in the newly cool Bohemia of lower east side. But that's all
powdered pigment... I prefer ready-mixed paint, because the dry pigment
prints coarser... not from not being finely enough ground, but from (my)
human frailty in surrounding each particle with gum arabic by rub rub
rub...  However, the manufacturers make their pigment info available now
-- tho not always on the tube. Unfortunately, they all have different
versions & different mixes, so just pigment name isn't enough, it's which
pigment by which manufacturer.

I take it, however, that you use the dry pigments -- do you have a nice
easy way of mixing?  One dry container would be practically a lifetime
supply -- no worry about proprietary changes...

 > ...BTW, what is AA Guide
> II?

That's the alternative processes book NOT to buy (and that has Ansel Adams
turning over in his grave)-- The Ansel Adams Guide: Basic Techniques of
Photography, Book Two by John P. Schaefer, Little, Brown & Co, 1998. John
Rudiak and I each jumped up & down on it in Post-Factory #2. As John put
it, "second or third-hand info, for entertainment only."  And more to the
point, much of the "info" (MOST of the gum printing "info") WRONG.

> When I started with gum printing I fell into the very same trap:>
> trying out recipes that were handed down through several generations of
> writers.  I noticed that they didnt agree on everything; so I tried to
> stick to everything they agreed on.  Wrong!  You gave one example.  Here is
> another one:  They all agreed that you should only use the most finely
> ground pigments that you can afford to buy.  They don't tell you that the
> more finely the pigments are ground the more severe the staining problem
> gets.  (Well, that's common sense, isn't it ?-)  If you use such pigments,
> then to build up sufficient density you need to coat many many times with
> low pigment concentrations.  The best that could be said for this way of
> doing gum prints is that it represents only one "school": many coatings in
> combination with automatic development results in softish prints eventually
> approximating the look of conventional photos.  To be sure, I find e.g.
> Livick's prints most impressive, from a technical point of view.  But there
> is another school that accentuates more the characteristics of the process.
> The idea here is to build up density quickly, ideally with 3 or 4 layers
> only.

Andre, if you -- among others -- had been around earlier, I could have
saved so much time I could be practically 30 again. Another one of those
"logical" errors was Paul Anderson's gum-pigment ratio test. It's absolute
nonsense, because a., more pigment doesn't stain relatively more, tho it
MAY stain absolutely more, since there's more pigment, and b., the paper
behaves completely differently once it's been wet, and with each
subsequent coat, and c., the whole business behaves differently WITH the
dichromate, so without the dichromate is meaninglessness multiplied --
among other points.

However, as I understand Livick's technique (I've ordered his book, expect
to learn more), he does only a few coats using the process colors. I also
understand that he uses a halftone neg -- which in my experience prints
very differently.

> The Father & Master of this school is Heinrich K"uhn (who invented multiple
> gum printing).  K"uhn called for dry, powdered pigments that are not too
> finely ground. With such pigments you virtually don't have a staining
> problem (well, modulo some other parameters).  He also disliked automatic
> development, claiming that a gum print that didn't develop in 5 to 10
> minutes (by softly pouring water over it) "ist nicht viel wert".  Those who
> are interested (and read German) can download an excerpt from K"uhn's
> Technik der Lichtbildnerei (1921):

> http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/Philosophie/Fuhrmann/themen/kuehn.pdf

> To my mind, this chapter is still the best practical guide to gum printing
> ever written.  (Incidentylly, it also clears up some common myths about the
> pictorialist programme.)

Oh oh, that's one I MUST have.... you're FORCING me to go to the Web...
Really,I'd rather go to the dentist. (And I did that *already* today.)  
However, Puyo and Demachy are EXCELLENT on gum -- en francais -- have you
read them?  There's a French paperback book about 1990 with several of
those essays, which if you don't know it I can probably locate to cite
details... The other essays are mostly of historic interest, but those are
marvelous...

I used to *speak* a little of what I called "kitchen German," but now
probably not even that. Will have to use all my brownie points with the
husband... although in both languages the vocabulary is so specialized,
in art and photo that you don't "speak" it anyway...

best,

Judy