Reviews
Part of Paper marbling: four preparations that must line up before anything else
Marbling supplies split into three separate storage problems, not one
How to store materials used for paper marbling: dry goods, wet chemistry and finished sheets each want different conditions. Alumed paper does not keep.
What to take away
- Marbling stock divides into threedry goods, wet chemistry, and finished sheets. Each wants different conditions.
- Alumed paper has a short shelf life and should be prepared in small batches.
- Light exposure accumulates and the damage is permanent, so a dark box beats a filtered window.
- Humidity control in a closed box is achievable and cheap, and it is what keeps stock usable.
Three categories, three storage problems
Store
- Dry paper stock
- Flat, dark, stable humidity
- Alum, size powder
- Sealed, dry, labeled, dated
- Mixed size
- Refrigerated, days at most
- Alumed paper
- Flat, used within days
- Finished sheets
- Flat, interleaved, dark
Because
- Dry paper stock
- Cockles and takes a curve
- Alum, size powder
- Absorbs moisture, clumps
- Mixed size
- Degrades and spoils sheets
- Alumed paper
- Loses effectiveness
- Finished sheets
- Offsets and fades
The row people get wrong is alumed paper. Preparing a large batch feels efficient and is not, because the mordant loses effectiveness as the sheets sit, and a stack of old alumed paper produces exactly the washed-out results that make beginners blame their technique. Prepare what a session will use and no more.
Storage by material type
Dry paper
- Where
- Flat, dark
- How long
- Long term
- Why
- Cockles, curves
Alum & size
- Where
- Sealed, dry
- How long
- Long term
- Why
- Clumps
Mixed size
- Where
- Refrigerated
- How long
- Days at most
- Why
- Spoils sheets
Alumed paper
- Where
- Flat
- How long
- Within days
- Why
- Loses strength
Light adds up, and it does not come back
Marbled sheets are pigment on a surface, and they fade with cumulative exposure rather than with any single event. Park Service guidance on reference photocopying is useful here because it does the arithmetic. It treats copying as a consumptive use like exhibition, notes that the resulting damage is permanent, and measures exposure in footcandle hours or minutes.
It gives five footcandles as the maximum recommended exhibit light level for paper materials, so an hour on display at that level is 300 footcandle minutes. Its rough averages per copy are 80 footcandle minutes for fluorescent scan machines, 175 for tungsten and 50 for xenon flash.
The practical version for a marbling store: every look costs something, so keep sheets boxed and take them out on purpose rather than leaving them on a shelf in daylight.
Controlling humidity inside a box
You do not need a conditioned room to keep a box of paper stable. The Park Service note on using silica gel in microenvironments explains the approach: silica gel can create and maintain both high and low humidity levels inside well-sealed enclosures, and used properly it will reduce daily, weekly and seasonal fluctuation.
For a home store, that is a lidded polypropylene box, conditioned silica gel in a breathable bag, and a small hygrometer inside. Fluctuation, more than any single reading, is what cockles stock.
Handling and interleaving finished sheets
- Interleave every marbled sheet. Pigment offsets onto whatever it touches.
- Keep sheets flat rather than rolled unless they are too large for any shelf.
- Handle by two corners, or with a support sheet underneath.
- Label the reverse in pencil with the date and the pattern.
That last habit costs nothing and is the only way to connect a sheet back to the size and dispersant ratios that produced it. Without it, a good result is unrepeatable.
Where in the room
Not above the tray, not on an outside wall, not on the floor. The zoning that makes this workable is set out in a small-space setup for decorative paper, and the process that produces the sheets is in paper marbling explained.
