Poster Mountain

I think I mentioned in one of the Mucha posts that we are currently working on a video blog. We have several interesting projects going on right now, but those are going to become video blogs, so we're holding off on posting them until everything is finished. So, more to come on those. However, to tide you over we are putting up the before and after photos of some of our favorite restoration projects. These are some of the most dramatic restorations Poster Mountain has performed over the years. Our first dramatic restoration is of a 1910 Chancellor Cigar ad that was glued to cardboard. It was demounted from the board and then remounted to a linen and Masa substrate before restoration work was performed to replace missing paper and deal with the staining of the paper. Up next is a Northern Pacific Railroad advertisement that had some water staining and fading of the colors.  It was linen backed and then airbrushed to cover the water damage and restore the original c

The pictures that we put up of each stage of conservation and restoration are only a fraction of what we take and those don't cover everything that happens to the piece during each new process. Restoration in particular is a time consuming process that takes a lot of patience. So even though you see the condensed version, each process takes hours and in the case of large pieces like this Mucha, days. The last Mucha post finished with prep, so the next step was masking for airbrushing. Masking and airbrushing go hand in hand, as Gabe works with Melissa and Aaron to decide which areas need to be airbrushed. The criteria for airbrushing is usually determined by how extensive the visible damage is and the wishes of the client. In this case the border area and the large patches in the image were being airbrushed.   Pictured: Gabe, John and Melissa talking about what needs to be done in terms of restoration. Gabe started out by masking for the border shot. He uses a combinat

I always feel that by calling these episodes they should start out with an epic introduction like the Star Wars movies... A long time ago, in a galaxy far away... A Mucha has been linen backed. It is about to lose the facing that held it together during the troubled times of the demount. So it must stand on it's own during prep, masking and airbrushing until it can finally return to it's full glory. Too much? Yeah, you're probably right. Back to reality... Pictured: The newly backed Mucha with the facing on after having dried overnight. How about that amazing Dante 3 sheet in the background, not bad either? We left the facing on overnight because if we had tried to pull it off the poster while any area was still damp we could have done a lot of damage. The next morning I pulled it off inch by careful inch. We work at an angle while doing this because it puts less strain on the poster while the facing is rolled away. Pictured: I am keeping a careful eye on t