Skip to main content

Some of our favorites...

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 colors.


Alberto Vargas was the artist of the next poster, a 1941 Moon Over Miami that was missing almost all of its border.


Vintage paper was used to add in what was missing to return this beauty to her former glory.


The next piece arrived at our studio glued to a board and covered in varnish. 


It was demounted and then remounted to a linen backing. Then countless hours were spent putting the mountains and sky in the background back in, not to mention small details in the figures.


The next 3 before and afters are crate labels. We are located in Southern California, which produces a lot of fruit. The crate labels from old turn of the century era California citrus crates have become a collectable item and we regularly restore missing corners and sections that were ripped when the label was taken off the crate.


Crate labels are not backed, instead they go through our isinglass gelatin process that allows us to temporarily work on them on a melamine board. We put thin patching tissue under the areas that are missing paper to support the paper patches.


For the size of these, which is roughly 10 in. by 8 in., we spend a lot of time prepping and restoring these small pieces.  


Each fruit company had its own specific crate label, often with slight differences between different types of fruit. Some of the most detailed advertisements we have seen have been these small crate labels. 


John found it ironic that this crate label of a pirate ship looks like it has been shot full of holes. 


Although it didn't look like that once we were finished with it! 


The next project is one of my personal favorites because I got to work on it when I was having a particularly rough week and coming in to see a Toulouse Lautrec resting on my table brightened my spirits. When this piece was taken out of the frame it looked like an accordion. 


It was demounted from the rotting linen it was originally backed to, then remounted to linen and Masa before we began restoration work.

The next poster was one of the most badly destroyed posters we have ever seen, although John still says the one that the cat peed on was worse. It is a campaign poster for William McKinley that was glued to a board. And as you can see from the picture the glue had started to affect the pigment of the paper and the inks. 


Melissa spent hours and hours working on this, but her hard work paid off! 





This 1938 Robin Hood 3 sheet came in as a 2 sheet. It was missing the entire top 3, as well as a few more chunks here and there.


 We used a blank piece of vintage paper from a different 3 sheet to add back in the missing section and then recreated the whole top third.


And last but not least, a little gem we have just finished. It is a small 1896 Alphonse Mucha litho for yet another of Sarah Burnhardt's shows.


Demounting this was one of the most frustrating demounts I have ever done, but the end result was well worth it! 


I checked the number of images that we have in the database and we have over 10,000 posters/fine art pieces entered into the database. These are just a small slice of some of our favorites that we have gotten the opportunity to work on over the years!



Comments

Post a Comment