Mounting old magazine page

Amy McCray

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Dec 3, 2002
Posts
2,780
Loc
North Prairie, WI
Thought I'd run this past TG before I proceed. Is a page (advertisement) out of an old Life mag. (1951) considered a conservation mounting method item?

I don't believe it cost much, but obviously the option of replacing is not available.

My initial reaction is to encapsulate in mylar. Or is this overkill and would dry mounting be acceptable? My little voice is screaming, Don't Dry Mount!!

Then again, maybe hinging is best, which eliminates the glare as an issue.

Have at it! Thanks in advance.
 
Amy, my not so little voice is screaming "1951", paper is FULL of acid and is selfdestructing.....

A very good scan and color reprint will out-live the original even if you do drymount the copy.

then the original can go back into safe keeping... :D

Otherwise, I would thing hing or encapsulate....customers choice... wouldn't Non-reflective mylar be nice...
thumbsup.gif
 
;) And now for something completely different. ;)

I buy and sell (and frame) a lot of old ads. For whatever it's worth in your considerations, the value of the ad is between $2 and $8. Zillions of these are available and have no real value except for framablity. No one collects them, and Life ads are very common place. You can buy complete issues issues of Life from that year for about $4-8 dollars. I have stacks of them in our store (Antiques and Framing) and they move very slowly.

Fifty years from now, they could replace the same ad for next to nothing. I have had the encapsulation/dry mounting discussion with a number of my customers and so far none have said that they care for it's preservation. It's a decorative that eventually will be tossed. They would rather see it drymounted than having to view it through mylar.

I know this isn't a popular view among framers and if it had any value I would agree, but I have yet to have a customer agree. Their typical reply is "conservation for a cheap ad??? This isn't some valuable piece of Ephemera."

I go to a number of ephemera shows where I buy magazines, ads and other epherma for framing and sales. Life ads are among the cheapest available. Now if we were talking about some of the great full color ads with wonderful art from magazines like 1920s Good Housekeeping, that's a different story. The most valuable of ads are the ones with great art, especially some of the deco art of the 20s. Maybe future generations will find some appeal to the mostly bland Cleaver Family art of the 50s, but the current generation is mostly rejecting 50's ad. There are some exceptions such as Coke ads, but even there the older ads have better art.

I believe in educating my customers where conservation is important and do so dilgently, but there is a line. Some ephemera can't justify it. Please don't flame me too badly for this.
 
How do you know it won't be valuable in 50 years? If everyone is throwing them out... I bet the ones that are left, because they have been preserved, will be of some value. Besides, it doesn't hurt to preserve anything. I say, it's better to be safe than sorry! Besides, preserving those things is so easy and it can be done as cheaply as drymounting...soo..
shrug.gif
why not? Just my thought on the matter.

Angie

[ 06-03-2005, 12:25 AM: Message edited by: Angie Pearson, CPF ]
 
Thanks everyone! Spoke w/ the customer and she said she actually didn't remember if it was from a Life Mag. or not. Her hubby picked it up at an auction.

It is in fact a Coca-Cola ad, showing a farrier sharing a coke w/ a young boy. The customer's husband is a farrier.

Baer, you're right - this thing is full of acid. Will check w/ them re: framing a copy but judging from the original conversation when they dropped it off, I believe their response will be just what Larry described. I don't think they will like the mylar shine either. So back to good ole dependable hinging. Dry mounting is out.
 
You can mount that page by wrapping it with fine mesh fabric. The technique is described in last month's PFM; the issue about textile framing, page 49 (as I recall). The article is about mounting fabric, but paper works exactly the same way, except no need for the oversize board with fabric cover & padding.

Lay the page on an alphacellulose mount board cut to its size or slightly larger; gently stretch Crepelne or Stabilitex overall and secure its edges on the back of the board. I like to use acrylic medium as the adjesive -- paint it on, let it dry, and then reactivate it with a tacking iron. Clean, quick, no mess, inert & long term stable.

The fine mesh fabric is almost invisible. I recently mounted some old, discolored, typewritten pages that way, and it worked out really well. If you want photos, send me a private email.
 
I've done several old magazine pages with Japanese hinges and they do fine. Read up on Hugh Phibbs Micro dot technique because they don't like much water and will cockle at the hinge site.

Be sure to use Bainbridge Artcare in the matting and backing board, plus filler board. This is the type of art that really benefits from zeolites.

Use UV filtering for the paper as well as the image.
 
Patience, please. I'm trying to learn a new thing with the photo posting...old dog, new trick.

The first ones were too small, and the next one's too big. What's the best pixel size to post?

[ 06-06-2005, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: Jim Miller ]
 
lol Mar!!! HAHA!

Jim even though you can't figure out how to post a picture... that's really interesting, thanks for sharing! Try clicking on the photo that's saved on your computer, then save it as "best for web" and then put it on your host site... it should be just the right size... Mar taught me that!... or maybe resize the picture to 50% smaller and then post it.
 
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