On April 24th, I presented my research at the annual ANAGPIC conference. If you saw my talk and have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.
(your fearless Chartex researcher presenting at the conference)
Also, I finally got around to scanning the instructional sheets included with my Chartex samples.
(click on the images for a larger version)
Here are two images taken with the polarizing light microscope.
This is the cotton backing:
This is the adhesive:
Although Chartex is described as “removable” in every source I could find that mentioned it by name…it requires heating your object up to 200ºF. That’s 93.3ºC – twice as much heat as is typically used to apply heat-set tissue mends. And after 30-40 years after it’s application, the Chartex adhesive has probably undergone at least some degree of cross-linking. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the things I noticed, while at the Cincinnati Art Museum, is that for vast majority of those posters lined with Chartex, the support was still in really good condition. Granted, many of the posters were grimy or slightly darkened/yellowed by time – shop that morning. There was a small group of posters in the Cincinnati collection that had been bound as part of a sample book (by the Strobridge Litho Co.) – they were all lined with a wheat-starch paste and cotton/linen lining. The support on those posters were yellowed, much darker and more brittle than the Chartex-lined posters. And they weren’t necessarily any older than the Chartex posters – in fact, I do recall seeing examples of the same poster in both the sample book group and also lined with Chartex.
From Neil Cockerline’s article:
Even though circus posters were produced by the thousands very cheaply, the materials utilized in their production were of higher quality than one might expect. Read the rest of this entry »
Suzy
Chartex Research Project 