Poster Mountain

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...

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...

This week we're going to look at just one aspect of an unusual restoration project that we just completed. A lot of posters that come into our studio are missing pieces.We have several ways to restore missing areas. Sometimes we have a reference for these, either in our own database or from the client. If there is no reference we get the opportunity to let our artists have a little more freedom and create it completely from scratch. This was the case when one of our clients brought in a Dutch "Tarzan Triumphs" door panel. After the poster was demounted there was only a small portion that was left of the original poster and no reference for it. Pictured: Original Dutch "Tarzan Triumphs" door panel before we did any conservation or restoration.  Pictured: "Tarzan Triumphs" after it had been demounted. The incomparable Antonia spent about two days on the paper patch and prep needed for this poster.  So between Aaron doing the airbrushing and ...