Poster Mountain

This is the last part in our Cacao series! Part 2 ended with all the borders being replaced and all the holes in the poster filled. Restoration is the final step and is often the most time consuming. This poster needed at least five different colors airbrushed, which also means five different masks. Pete got to work, laboriously covering up or opening up areas using a low tack tape, acetate, frisket and misket. He has quite the arsenal of tools! Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Aaron in action during airbrushing. However, his work speaks for itself. Pictured below are before and afters of several of the layers of colors he was working on. It's been a while now, but I think this is the border was the final area that was airbrushed.  After airbrushing, the boys (excuse me, men) with all the colored pencils get to work filling in all the small details that make a good poster. My favorite photos of Gabe were when he was working on the longitudes and lati...

Part 1 of this series finished with the old backing being removed from an early 20th Century French Cacao poster. After taking the backing off we washed the poster again to try to remove as much of the leftover adhesive as possible. Then it was again put through the isinglass gelatin process and left to dry face down on a board overnight.    John and Ravi moving the large and heavy melamine board over to the shelves so it can dry overnight.  There was still a thin layer of adhesive remaining on the back of the poster. John used a fine grit sand paper to remove this last layer of glue. John checking and sanding down any uneveness leftover from the remaining adhesive. Next, the poster was removed from the board with the hollytex facing still on the front. The poster was then washed one last time before glue was applied to the back and it was mounted to masa and linen. John washing the poster and hollytex for a final time. After applying glue to t...

Our next series of blog posts will feature the conservation and restoration of a vintage poster for one of  France's oldest chocolate brands: Le Cacao Poulain, which translates into English as the Chocolate Colt. (The icon of this company is usually a jumping colt  and appears to play off of  founder Victor-August Poulain's last name.)  The vintage poster our client brought us dates from the late 19th century.  It was mounted to a foam core board and had some previous restoration.  Before Step 1 was to get the poster off the board or more accurately get the board off the poster. John and Jairo began by chipping away at the board, layer by layer.  Once the board was off the poster there were still several additional layers to remove. The linen that the poster was on was also mounted to Chartex, which is a fabric lining applied with a heat activated wax-based adhesive. We first removed the Chartex, using a heat gun, iron and some w...