Poster Mountain

We have put up so many contemporary silk screens recently that I decided that for this week's post we needed to do some fine art. So we are, as this week's title suggests, documenting another Vargas drawing that John worked on. This particular piece is a sketch on tracing paper. When we received it the paper was extremely creased, most noticeably in two sections that ran right though the drawing. Because of the nature of the tracing paper and the fact that the medium Vargas used was watercolor pencil, washing this was not an option nor was using John's isinglass technique. Any moisture that moved across the surface could potentially take the whole drawing with it. So John devised a strategy that used a limited amount of moisture, the flat press and the heat press to remove the creases. Pictured: The Vargas Girl before we began work. You can clearly see the two creases running through the whole drawing. John set up a small humidity chamber on the glass topped tabl...

PROVISO: Each poster is a special case requiring specialized methods. We do tests on each piece before we begin working. We do this for a living, we are professionals. You absolutely must never ever ever try this at home. Okay? Okay let's go.  This week we are going to repair a Tyler Stout "Lost" silkscreen that was damaged in shipping. It happens every so often that a poster is shipped in a weak tube and the tube gets folded or crushed or, God forbid, rained on during shipping. A poster is ruined and a lesson is learned. Except we can fix that poster. This particular case calls for the John Davis-innovated Isinglass Gelatin Backing Technique. Here is our silkscreen. Unfortunately in this photo the business of the image conceals the degree of messed-up-itude which I assure you is indeed disturbing. When the light hits from an angle the damage is very distracting. Pictured: "Lost" silkscreen by Tyler Stout These photos were posted here by the owne...

We have a two part blog this week. The first part is about building crates for two works of art that were being shipped across the country. The second is about a project that has been in the works for years... You'll have to read the first half the blog to find out what it is. So, on to part one! While Poster Mountain and LA Paper Group are conservation and restoration studios, we are happy to consult on anything that is poster/paper related, which is how we ended up working on this project. A client brought in two framed pieces of art work that were being shipped across the country, but he was leery of just putting them in a cardboard box. We generally ship posters out in tubes, but since these pieces were framed that was not an option. So John told him that we (we meaning Gabe, our resident handyman and power tool expert) could build individual crates for each piece. It was an added bonus that the two pieces were really cool. One  is original art and the other is an artist'...