Digital BW, The Print

I did a little reading on that website he gave us.

http://www.picreator.co.uk/articles/3_renaissance_wax.htm 

Apparently Renaissance Wax was created in the 19th century to act as a
substite for traditional waxes for the purpose of preserving antique
furniture, and later rare documents. It was designed for this purpose
from petroleum  products to replace bees wax and other natural waxes
that had been used by conservators because of the acid content of
these "natural" waxes. 

I wrote them an email asking for all information they may have about
the suitability of using this product on rag papers and pigment inkjet
prints in particular. If they write me back I'll post it. Usually
Light Impressions does their homework on this kind of thing since
their primary clinet base involves conservators museums and galleries
and they have sold it for years.

The interesting part of all this for me was finding out that bees wax
was destructive to documents and developed a very acidic environment
over time. What does that mean? Well, all the encaustic art work out
there in collections all over the world from artists ranging from
Jasper Johns to Doug and Mike Starn are coated with it. There has even
been commentary by some artists that coating their inkjet prints with
encaustic, composed of bees wax, gave them protection and greater
longevity; apparently not. I could be missing something? 

As to Renaissance Wax, sounds like it does protect long term. It would
be nice to know for sure. Where is Wilhelm when you need him?

John




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Charlie"
<psiempyo@...> wrote:
>
> I am interested in what happens to this wax long term.  We know that 
> the rag substrate and pigment can go well over 100 years with 
> excellent stability but what about the wax? Yellowing and flaking 
> (even if it occurs after I am long gone) are my concern.
> 
> 
> charlie
>