Poster preservation 101

I found this advice on line and thought I’d share it,

  1. Clean with a good quality eraser and then with a damp cotton ball to remove surface grime from the front.
  2. Immerse the whole piece is cold water to float off the surface print to separate it from its acidic backing. If there is no backing the water bath is a good idea as the wash will clean and flatten
  3. I let it dry thoroughly, light bleached the whole print for two hours on the front and 4 hours on the back and then let it dry again.
  4. Spot bleach any stained areas and then rinse it.
  5. While wet line with Japanese tissue using wheat starch paste.
  6. Let dry thoroughly.
  7. Humidify the print by sandwiching it between teflon sheets and placing it on top of a wet blotter and put a piece of glass on top to let it flatten out, and placed it under a lot of weight.
  8. Linen backing stage (not covered in detail)
  9. Inpaint the damaged areas that had pigment loss with reversible acrylics.

I’m going to try this myself on a poster shortly so that you can see the results. My biggest barrier ? drying time, I just hate to wait its always been the same from painting Airfix models onwards !

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