Cleaning glass negs

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michaelfinch
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Cleaning glass negs

Post by michaelfinch » Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:16 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I have a small number of glass negatives dating from the 1950s. They show typical silvering around the edges of the emulsion. Some years ago, a colleague cleaned up some similar negs using Dura-Glit. They don't seem to have taken any harm in the intervening years. Is there a better, recommended method and does anyone have experience in this? I assume a rewash and fix would be a staring point to stabilise them but would that help reduce the silvering. All thoughts welcome.

Matt_Bigwood
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Re: Cleaning glass negs

Post by Matt_Bigwood » Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:02 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I would be quite careful with any approach to cleaning glass plates. When I worked for a newspaper I was asked to print some 9x12cm glass plates from the 1950s and the emulsion was very delicate on those - possibly because of insufficient fixing or washing when they were originally developed. On a number of the negs the emulsion had started to peel off and I had to sandwich the peeled emulsion between two sheets of glass to rescue it.

michaelfinch
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Re: Cleaning glass negs

Post by michaelfinch » Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:40 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Thanks for the steer Matt. And apologies for delay in replying. I too used to work in newspapers and the management, in its wisdom, gave our glass and 120 format negatives to a museum which promised to conserve and catalogue them. I'll not bore with details but a former colleague contacted me a couple of weeks ago to check which museum. It seems that a collection of many hundreds of glass plates and I don't know how many 120s have gone AWOL. Can't believe it. Nor could my colleague who checked with me as he couldn't believe it either. Surely some mistake. Seems not. Now, there may be a rational explanation but.....................
A handful of glass negs were retained and I had the job of copying them which I did using a now discontinued Kodak direct copying film. Shortly after that we moved to a new out of town business park and all remaining glass and copy negs were consigned to the waste bin. With the works manager's permission I rescued them. That was in the late 1980s.The copy negs are still in good nick but the others are the ones that need TLC. I've had a go (very gently) with the silver polish, on a couple showing the most silvering around the edges, and they have cleaned up nicely. I'm leaving it at that for the time being. See how they get on. The actual emulsion is not showing any signs of separating from the glass.
Meanwhile there's an exhibition at the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, of daguerrotypes made by John Ruskin in the mid-19thC on trips to Venice. Not the best technical quality and the catalogue alludes to that but some were made when the great man was just 16 years old. Fascinating to see the technical limitations of the kit available in those days (esp lenses) but nevertheless a wonderful show and a priceless historic archive. And you know what? c.180 of Ruskin's plates turned up a few years ago in a Penrith auction room! The catalogue refers to 'Penrith auction' which suggests it might even have the cattle market. They're now in a private collection - but at least the Ruskin Libarary is looking after them!

Cheers

Matt_Bigwood
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Re: Cleaning glass negs

Post by Matt_Bigwood » Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:13 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

That story sounds very familiar - I started working at the newspaper in the mid 80s and was told that virtually all the glass plates from the 1920s to the 50s had been thrown away in the early 60s as they were too heavy and took up too much space. I left there about 10 years ago, and the company, which was once family owned, is now part of a national newspaper publisher's portfolio. There are thousands of negs from the 60s to 2002, when digital took over, festering in a store room and I fear that one day they may be destined for a skip.

Even worse, a late uncle of mine worked for a printing company which had some association with the Francis Frith Company, and he told me how they used to scrape the emulsion off 12"x10" glass plates to replace a pane of glass in a greenhouse, and that many were smashed to form the foundations for a shed....

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Re: Cleaning glass negs

Post by Andrew Plume » Thu Jan 17, 2013 10:54 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

that's not great on the FRITH front, Matt

fume

fume, fume :roll: :roll:

andrew

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