Sintra (PVC?!) as archival mounting material?
Thor Lancelot Simon
experiences with frame shops in the past, and, really, it's just not that
hard. However, a few months ago a friend from art school gave my wife
and I a few very large color prints as a gift. I'm not tremendously happy
mounting RC paper under the best of circumstances -- it's fiddly, too easy
to not fuse the tissue or to damage the print -- and these were large
enough that, even trimmed, I would have needed several passes through the
press to mount them, with the associated risk of damage to the center part
where the pressings would overlap.
So, we asked my friend for a recommendation and got the name of what seemed,
when my wife walked in, to be a pretty good and professional frame shop:
gift prints from various luminaries on the wall, a seemingly very
knowledgeable guy behind the counter, and so forth.
Things went downhill from there, however. I'd sent her to the shop with
very simple instructions: dry-mount the prints to ArtCare archival foam-core,
museum board, or Light Impressions archival cardboard; overmat with
unbuffered 100% rag, simple aluminum sectional frames and plain glass. The
framer said that, basically, they couldn't do that. They didn't dry-mount
anything -- I couldn't get a coherent explanation of what adhesive they _did_
use secondhand through my wife on the cellphone -- and they preferred to not
mount photographs on museum board or archival foam-core; they generally
mounted or hinged them to Sintra, then overmatted with museum board.
Last I checked, Sintra was, basically, foamed or corrugated PVC plastic and
was decidedly *not* archival. A quick web search got me various homepages
of photographers claiming to mount their work on "archival Sintra" but given
what I know of the relevant chemistry, I am very, very suspicious about that.
I don't think I believe you _can_ make an archival substrate out of PVC, and
I see no claim anywhere that any product sold under the name "Sintra" is
made of anything but.
I'm aware that we're mounting all-too-ephermeral C prints, here, and thus
many folks would be more casual about it, but I was rather stunned by the
suggestion to glue them to a sheet of PVC.
I relayed this to the framer through my wife and again requested simple
dry-mounting to museum board or archival foam-core; no luck. In fact, he
got rather outraged and suggested another frame shop that did more
"old-fashioned" work. This, to me, would be the usual sign of a fly-by-night
framing outfit, but the place came quite highly recommended by a number of
friends and, evidently, had recently done work for Mary Ellen Mark, Avedon,
and sundry other folks who sell their prints for enough that I'd expect they
don't want them fading away to nothing in a few short years.
So, does anyone know what the deal is, here? Am I all wet? Is there such
a product as "archival sintra"? If so, what's it made of? And how would one
go about attaching a large -- approximately 32x40" -- print to it without
dry-mounting it or leaving it sagging? I am reasonably sure for other
reasons that the shop in question is _not_ using the 3M repositionable
adhesive product, which is the only thing I can think of -- but given their
generally pristine reputation, I have trouble believing they're casually
spray-mounting prints to sheets of PVC, either...
--
Thor Lancelot Simon t...@rek.tjls.com
But as he knew no bad language, he had called him all the names of common
objects that he could think of, and had screamed: "You lamp! You towel! You
plate!" and so on. --Sigmund Freud
Gregory W Blank
it to mean,
Sintra I am shure you know, is intended for panels to be used for trade show
displays. In working at a pro lab that mount to the stuff I learned that
they use a tackey low temp heat activated adhesive that bonds the print to
the board
the adhesive used in my experience is not archival. (Even if the board is)
When I ask the
The person incharge of "Mounting" whether they ever used archival materials
she stated "whats archival" meaning there really is no defined
answer,....so if you want it done
in a way you approve,...once again you do it yourself.
In article <apt451$kri$1...@panix5.panix.com>, t...@rek.tjls.com wrote:
> So, does anyone know what the deal is, here? Am I all wet? Is there such
> a product as "archival sintra"? If so, what's it made of? And how would one
> go about attaching a large -- approximately 32x40" -- print to it without
> dry-mounting it or leaving it sagging? I am reasonably sure for other
> reasons that the shop in question is _not_ using the 3M repositionable
> adhesive product, which is the only thing I can think of -- but given their
> generally pristine reputation, I have trouble believing they're casually
> spray-mounting prints to sheets of PVC, either...
--
Photographic website @
http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblank
Bbeauban
large commercial lab and we would most certainly steer away from anything PVC.
You can have it dry mounted on 4 or even 8-ply museum board. The Artcare or
other archival foam materials tend to have an uneven surface when dry mounted.
I suggest you find another framer.