Poster Mountain

Part 1 ended with this section of the screen drying after being backed to a piece of Okawara paper. Paper mounts at first glance are deceptively simple, because it just seems like gluing one thing to another. However, the amount of moisture that is applied to the backing and the piece itself (as with just about any paper conservation process) is key. John told me the story of how many years ago one time he had over wet the Okawara backing for a rare, mint condition poster while mounting it. A few days later, as the paper contracted while drying, it ripped and tore diagonally across the poster taking an entire corner section off. (Now you also see why we let things dry for several days before we begin restoration or release them to clients.) They were able to fix it and make the poster look perfect again, but the moral of that story was that even when something looks like it is going to be easy, things can go horribly wrong. Fortunately, nothing went wrong with this screen

One of the many things that I love about my job is that it is a constant learning experience. In the last year we have gotten so many weird and interesting projects that have expanded our knowledge by leaps and bounds. Last year a client brought in a six panel Chinese folding screen and it was a huge, time consuming project because it was the first time we had ever done anything like that. (See the blog posts for that screen here ) A few weeks ago a client brought in another Chinese folding screen. This one had been torn by a small child and 3 of the 4 panels were warping around the tears because of a change in humidity. Pictured: So even though we took more than 700 photos for this project, none of them were just simple before photos. This is the closest we have. Pictured: A 4 year old wreaked some havoc on this poor screen. Pictured: Although having seen the havoc that toddlers can cause, this isn't too bad. And we've definitely seen worse. The client did

I just realized that it has been more than a month since we had put anything up. I'd apologize, but we have been so busy in the last few weeks that I just haven't had time to think about getting a new post out. Fortunately some of the projects we have been working on will become blogs over the next few weeks. However, I do have a few things to tide you over just a few more days until our next full blog post.   At the top of my list is the large Mucha poster we restored last summer. When we started to blog this project I couldn't find any of the before pictures we had taken, which irked my inner perfectionist to no end. However, while searching for something else a few weeks ago, I stumbled across the photos. I have absolutely no idea where they popped up from but I saved them and have updated the first part of the Mucha series. Which you can view here: Mucha Episode 1 Updated  We have also been working on another Chinese folding screen that will be up in the next few