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I'm just making a new mount and rehinging this to freshen it up, it isn't going to a conservator or anything. It is a carborundum print from 1999 in its original frame.
I'm interested to know what has caused the damage. The mount and glass are mouldy but I can't see any signs of damp. The backing board is bone dry with no mould. The sealing tape firmly stuck down all round. The paper itself seems dry but there is this weird ghost effect and bubbling on the reverse. Foxing (?) on the front and brown marks on the tape where it is hinged.
For my personal learning, can anyone explain which bits of the framing caused what? Its been drummed into me about deionised water - are the brown stains where normal water was used? The ghosting effect may just be the artwork I suppose as there is no undermount. I'm just intrigued as to what caused what over the last 20+ years as a real life example.
It can be due to a variety of things, so there's not necessarily one particular cause. There is also a certain amount of humidity in the air in any room and at times the level of humidity can be higher, or lower. At night when the household heating goes off and the temperature drops, any air inside the frame will cool and as a result the volume of air will decrease, but the air pressure outside the frame is reasonable constant and a reduction of the air pressure inside the frame means that this can be comensated for by the external air pressure finding it way into the inside of the frame.
During the day the heating comes back on and the process gets reversed. So within certain levels the humidity inside the frame tracks with the humidity which is outside the frame. It actually takes more than a certain level of humidity for mould growth and it's also dependant upon what level of available nutirtion is available to support mould growth. A lot has been said in the past on this forum about MDF backing boards containing all the right ingredients to support mould growth and this is a complicated subject. With enough air flow behind the frame, mould does not necessarily have chance to develop in an adeqately heated a ventilated room, so maybe those little rubber bumpers which some framers put on the back of their frame help to maintain sufficient air to minimise this problem.
Framing a paper artwork in contact with the glass, can result in small amounts of micro condensation on the inside of the glass soaking into the paper artwork and thus often producing discolouration, or even mould growth over time. This is why mounts were originally invented. A mount containing an adequate quantity of alkaline content provides the wrong environment to support mould growth, which is why mounts can be recommened. A mount is not the only method of keep the artwork away from the artwork, an air space is often provided by means of spacers behind the glass, this is not only an effective option, but also another presentation option.
Neutral pH mountboards only have a limited useful lifetime for providing any meaningful protection to the artwork, before they can become acidic and not only no longer provide any useful protection against mould growth, but also can transfer acidic contact from the mountboard to the artwork, often with potentially harmful results. The was a time when conservation mountboards were an expensive option, but these days they are more commonly used and with increasing levels of use' and their relative price compared with inferior grades of mountboard is such the many of us only stock and use only conservation mountboard. In fact, many suppliers offer a limited range of mountboard colours as a budget range of conservation mountboards. Personally speaking, I have not found any point finanical in stocking anything other than conservation mountborrd, as the price difference is so trivial.
Mark Lacey
“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
JKX - the board isn't MDF, it looks like Artbak or similar. Grey one side, brown coated on the other. No marking, mould or discolouration at all on it. The sealing tape is self-adhesive.
Mark: The mount itself hasn't discoloured, just mouldy. And spots on the print. I am making the new mount with conservation board so that should help I hope.
Since the backing board is grey on one side, the base material may be grey board pulp and if so, grey board pulp generally is produced from recycled news print paper, which is about the cheapest source of paper that is availabe. Consquently, it's chemcal composition is not considered important, because news papers are a throw away item and also the purity of the pulp is at best doubtful. It may in fact be to some degree better than MDF, but maybe by not a lot.
MDF contains demaldehyde which is an ingredient for epoxy resign, this is a highly active and reactactive substance, it's ingredients are also very invasive and can even out gas into nearby susceptable materials. There is a lot of opinion expessed in the picture framing world about what this could mean in terms of undesirable effect concerning mould growth and possible harmful effects of colour pigments in artworks. Guild standards strongly suggest that there are advantages in using a layer of mountboard between the backing board and the mount artwork.
If you examine the American standards this board is refered to a filter layer, as opposed to a barrier layer. I would suggest that this filter layer is not without it's advantages, since two international respected bodies are happy to recommend this practice. It is perhaps, because an alkaline buffered piece of mountboard is an effective counter to the fact that mould needs an acidic envronment to grow at all and the alkaline layer in mountboard will arrest the continued mould growth while the mountboard's alkaline buffer remains active. Either way it is definitely a reccommended practice and since most of us have plenty of waste mountboard, it's not going to cost us a lot any way.
Mark Lacey
“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
I would say that it is not a carborundum print. Note the lack of anything in the background. I would say that it is a traditional Intaglio print.
The major area of discoloration on the verso side appears to be the where the blue ink was applied to the print. I remember in the 80's Leroy Neiman had some prints run (serigraphs) by a commercial screen print printer. These prints had similar damage to the paper as seen from the verso side. These prints were analyzed and it was found that the chemical composition of the ink was to blame. This might be the same cause here.
Hinged to an undermount is fine, although as there is a window mount there are several non adhesive methods you could use. I’d not worry too much unless it was restored by a conservator though, adding that missing undermount will help (and would have helped) a lot, however it’s fixed to it.
It’s all just a combination of acids and impurities in the paper, the boards, (especially the backing board) the inks/paints and the tape used for hingeing, reacting to air and moisture, probably light too - the darker areas absorb more of it.
Moisture could be from condensation or evaporation, maybe helped along by a bad hanging location.
I’d think about sealing the glass in, making that glass conservation glass and using correx as a backing. Felt bumpers too.
