Re: Determining SPT with gum Was: Gums a la Demachy and Puyo

In a message dated 15/07/2006 20:05:30 GMT Daylight Time, Ender100@aol.com
writes:

> T-Rex,
>
> Your point was that "all this stuff was is quite unnecessary in making gum
> prints"
>
> Could you define "stuff"? :)
>

Mark

If you read the correspondence Mark, you will find that what is meant by
'stuff' in this context is clear. But here is a little further explanation of
the background.

There is a propensity in the world of alt printing, and is the amateur
approach generally, from fishing to doing up old cars, to make thngs unnecessarily
complicated. For some it's part of the fun and thatis fair enough. But my fun
ks making pictures . When one looks back through the manuals for over the past
150 years, one finds people who add unnecessary chemicals, use registration
systems appropropriate to animation cells when a couple of pins would do the
job, conduct many tests as they do not trust the highly paid specialists where
film or pigment is manufactured, and so on.

You do not need long dissertations on molecular weight to make a substitute
for Gloy. You do not need complicated maths and curves to make a good platinum
print using film ( I am not talkng 'digital' here). Chrysotypes can be made
simply and easily without having to indulge in references to moles or ligands.
Incidentally, the names chrysotype rex and cyanotype rex were not only a means
of differentiating them but a joke, maybe rather an 'in' joke, but perhaps
that was why you did not get it, hehe ! But it won't be funny if I have to
explain it.

Often just a little thought would demonstrate that one could obtain the same
quality with far less effort .It is the quality which is important. I make
salt prints, platinum prints, and gum prints for the qualities they give which
otherwise would have been lost to us in the name of industrial efficiency, but
this does not mean that I have to make these prints in such a way that the
method gets in the way of the final print. What is more, I can see little point
in striving to make a gum print look like a C type.

Someone asked whether there was a difference between UK and US gum printing.
There appears to be, on this list at least, a US preference for long and
unnecessarily complicated methods of making gum prints. On talking to other US gum
printers at APIS in Santa Fe or US gum printers in London, one finds that this
overcomplication is not general in the US.

One wonders why this overcomplication is so predominant in this list that if
one seeks to question it, one is treated like a Darwinist in the Bible belt (
I hope you get the reference to the film, hehe).

Terry.
Received on 07/16/06-01:44:49 AM Z