From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 01/01/01-04:35:35 PM Z
On Mon, 1 Jan 2001, Sandy King wrote:
> Just curious, though, in addition to the gray/black colors you sometimes
> have seen are, there other colors that one can get from Vandyke? I am
> curious because a while back I used the dry mount press to flatten a
> Vandyke print out and it changed the color from a light chocolate black to
> a very deep dark/black much more neutral in tone. When I put the print in
> the dry mount press it still had some humidity in it, though it was dry.
Sandy, first, thanks for your prior description of why salt printing -- it
corroborated my own sense of the prints as what might be called more
*complex.* Or the possibility of such at their best. I also thought
perhaps the image *itself* might be a thicker layer -- it's created with
two coats on the paper, isn't it? Maybe the two combine to give greater
physical density? (Well, the thought did come to mind.) Since scale of
negative is much longer, that presumably also affects print.
Of course not every salt print makes it. Three of the old ones at Met
Museum show last year were stunning, spectacular, deep coppery shadows.
Others right next to them could have been -- ordinary VDB !
As for toning VDB -- should you want to do such a futile operation you can
tone with regular blue toner formula (equal parts A&B + acetic acid in
water). I've used that to soften harsh VDB on overly contrasty paper --
just taking the edge off. Or try palladium toner, should make near black
(I've never done that, but pd makes kalli black).
As for the "heat toning" -- heat (iron or press) applied to any VDB at
any age will turn it what (to my eye) is a much less attractive dull
brown. Nor does it seem to reverse in cooling.
Judy
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