platinumprintssilk

[platinumprintssilk]

Still Alive

Allopath doc did not manage to kill me. As a result I ordered a supply of ferric oxalate. I bought a fresh pound of ammonium ferric oxalate last year. Opening it this month I found it is effectively dead. It's DOA! Now it probably works for noncritical applications but not for reducing platinum to image-forming metal on silk. And a new supply of 100g of the chemical I bought in January also is worthless. This is why I pretty much abandoned apotheosizing my various processes: the chemicals' behavior is not predictable. And I am not so naive as to expect the gumps and trolls of the photrio analog forum who cannot even mix ascorbic acid with a solution of ammonium ferric oxalate to prepare sensitizer from scratch. I am now then awaiting delivery of 100g of ferric oxalate. That is the chemical used for develop out platinum printing , which is how everybody in the world other than I does it. I will prepare a standard solution of the ferric oxalate (about 26% strength), and then mix that with a solution composed of Arm and Hammer washing soda ( sodium carbonate ) and oxalic acid (a common cleansing agent used for metal surfaces that one does not wish to abrade). The result will be sodium ferric oxalate. That was Pizzighelli's (the guy who invented the platinum print out process that a certain fat bald POS university don from Scotland claimed to have invented along with the glass coating rod...) favorite sensitizer for platinum.

[platinumprintssilk]

The Book Redux

Reconstructing The Book this week. I have nine platinum prints on 19 momme and 30 momme silk. I actually managed to get taffeta silk through my canon inkjet printer and printed nine accompanying poems in black (pigment) ink on them. This time instead of sewing the silk photographs onto black canvas, I am "wiring" them onto long, narrow strips of stiff aluminum fabric. The whole iset s still mounted in a pina zangaro aluminum binder. Will affix a 4x5 platinum - silk print on the outside. Pic of this coming when I get ti together. I have a medical "procedure" Monday and want to have The Book complete by then in case the buggers kill me off with their instruments and drugs. Oh, my.

[platinumprintssilk]

Platinum Prints On Silk: How

I have gotten several inquiries imploring me to explain how to print platinum on silk. I will not do so for a simple, possibly childish, reason. In 2015 a mob of angry villagers (yeah, just like in Frankenstein) from the prime Gump & Troll forum on the interwebs, photrio analog, attempted to cancel me and my various postings on the interwebs because I insulted their head troll, a POS from Turkey whose name is unknown to the world, as it should remain. Only the integrity of the owners of the various websites that the trash assailed kept my work active and available on the interwebs. However, I never received an apology from the troll master owners of photrio, nor from any of the members. Refusing to share all I have learned in over 10 years about printing platinum and palladium on fabric seems right and correct as long as the photrio.com analog forum exists. If the gumps and trolls of that forum form a gofundme or similar page and collect enough money to send me 40 St. Gaudens twenty dollar gold pieces, minted betrween 1907 and 1933, in excellent or better condition, I will publish for them precise instructions on how to print a pure platinum photograph on a piece of silk fabric woven with mulberry silk. And I will hold a series of webinars giving them hands on instructions and guidance in preparing silk, platinum, sensitizer, and in exposing the images including how to adjust contrast. Until that time, I will keep my formula and processes private and continue as the sole printer of platinum on silk in the world. And they can continue printing their crappy palladium prints that won't even fetch $25 on Ebay Buy It Now.

[platinumprintssilk]

 PLATINUM PRINTS ON SILK

[platinumprintssilk]

Platinum on Silk, At Last

It's been a long learning curve, but finally I have perfected printing on silk. Here's a video of The Book, 8 prints 6 of which are platinum and palladium or just palladium on silk and 2 of which are on cotton.

Silk is made of insect protein; it is not a plant fiber. That protein interferes with platinum's reduction to it's elemental state (to form a photographic image). You will find a lot of talk about platinum on silk, and some misinformation mostly from a wordpress site ( big surprise there). To clear things up: * Horst P Horst did not print any of his negatives in platinum -- Horst commissioned prints of select negatives in platinum on cotton. Horst did not commission prints on silk. The photograph "Lisa on Silk" depicts a nude Lisa Fonssagrives half-reclined on a large piece of silk, hence "Lisa on Silk." A Christie's catalog copy writer misunderstood "Lisa on Silk" to mean a portrait of Lisa printed on silk. *Robert Mapplethorpe did not print his own photographs, not in silver gelatin nor in platinum. He commissioned both. The Mapplethorpe platinum prints were made on cotton (watch the film "Mapplethorpe") and not on silk. In fact, the well-known portrait of Warhol was platinum on cotton with silk panels sewn onto the cotton to create a cross for the demento saint ... *The Fraenkel Gallary in NYC has recently begun offering photograveures of Mapplethorpe negatives in platinum on silk. A photogravure is NOT the same as a photographic process that deposits platinum chemically on a substrate. A photogravure is effectively a 19th century inkjet print. * Irving Penn printed platinum, and some palladium, on paper, not on cotton and not on silk * The Platinotype Company manufactured and sold (little of both) silk fabric presensitized with platinum. Virtually zero platinum on silk prints survive from 1897 when they introduced the product to 1921 when they discontinued the product. Platinum's price exploded around 1910 -- effectively ending the platinum era -- and only went back down after World War II. In the roughly 12 years it was available and affordable(ish) apparently other products shaded it: silver on silk costing a fraction of the price was popular enough that many such prints, from the first third of the 20th century, are at any given time offered for sale at fairly modest prices on Ebay. No platinum photographs on silk are available for sale nor are they found in any archives or libraries. Search for yourself. They exist only in the mind of one poor fellow who started a wordpress site apparentlly to try to sell some overpriced frou frou Japanese paper. I do not print on paper; I print on silk and I am the only person on this planet who can print platinum on silk. It's quite simple: when William Willis' Platinotype Company shut down in the 1930s, the formula for sensitizing silk with platinum was discarded, thrown in the trash or in a furnace. Hence, nobody knows how to prep silk for applying the ferric oxalate and potassium platinum chloride so that it will develop out after exposure to UV light. And the vast majority of people print today platinum prints using palladium. Printing platinum on silk is infinitely beyond their limited intellectual capacity ever to figure out. And since I disdain the process of developing out platinum using potassium oxalate or other poison, I will not bother working out a formula for developing out platinum on silk.

Collectors are welcome to inquire with rhodiotype@gmail.com. I will be holding no workshops and I will be publishing no instructions on how to print platinum (or palladium) on silk. In addition to the book, I will be preparing in the near future 3 sets of 7 prints from the Texas Revolution of 1835 to 1836. The prints will be platinum or platinum with palladium (three-quarters platinum and one-quarter palladium to half of each metal, always specified with precision). The determination of pure platinum vs some palladium added to the platinum is based on the negative being printed, it's tonality and contrast.