Gold/Thiourea Toner and Archival Process for Van Dyke Prints

D_Quinn · Jan 26, 2025

This weekend, I finally started making Van Dyke brown prints. It’s much faster than making salt prints, and I like the unique, subdued color it produces.

I’m also planning to try toning the prints once I manage to make good ones. If anyone has a good Gold/Thiourea toner formula, please share it here. I have the formulas for salt printings but couldn’t find them for Van Dyke Prints. Since gold solutions are expensive, I’d really appreciate tips on using them efficiently and economically.

Here’s the archival workflow I’m considering after exposing the paper.
Please let me know if any steps need adjustments:

Archival Process:

First Wash: 0.1% citric acid solution (2 min)
Rinse: Tap water (1 min)
Toning: (1–2 min)
First Fix: 5% Hypo (2 min)
Second Fix: 5% Hypo (2 min)
Rinse: Tap water (30 sec)
Hypoclear: 1% sodium sulfite solution (3 min)
Final Wash: Tap water (30 min)
Drying
Waxing: Renaissance Wax

I’m using Hahnemühle Platinum Rag paper for these prints.

Finally, does anyone know which process is more archival: salt prints or Van Dyke brown prints?

Thank you, as always.

retina_restoration · Jan 26, 2025

Whatever you do, I strongly suggest you avoid using that Renaissance Wax! I tried it on a couple of prints, just out of curiosity and it ruined them. Never again.

Gold toner is gold toner. You can use the same recipes on Salt prints, Vandykes, Kallitypes etc.
I use a gold/thiocyanate toner for my work. It’s very similar. One gram of gold chloride makes 500ml of stock solution, and a working solution of toner takes only 5ml of the gold to make 100ml. You can tone one 8x10 (or 11x14) print in 100ml of gold toner if you use a flat bottom tray, so you can tone 100 large prints with one gram of gold chloride. That’s quite economical, IMO. At the current ArtCraft price for gold chloride, that makes the cost about 70 cents per print. That’s not so bad, considering how much the film and Hahnemuhle paper costs.

Carnie Bob · Jan 26, 2025

retina_restoration said:
Whatever you do, I strongly suggest you avoid using that Renaissance Wax! I tried it on a couple of prints, just out of curiosity and it ruined them. Never again.

Gold toner is gold toner. You can use the same recipes on Salt prints, Vandykes, Kallitypes etc.
I use a gold/thiocyanate toner for my work. It’s very similar. One gram of gold chloride makes 500ml of stock solution, and a working solution of toner takes only 5ml of the gold to make 100ml. You can tone one 8x10 (or 11x14) print in 100ml of gold toner if you use a flat bottom tray, so you can tone 100 large prints with one gram of gold chloride. That’s quite economical, IMO. At the current ArtCraft price for gold chloride, that makes the cost about 70 cents per print. That’s not so bad, considering how much the film and Hahnemuhle paper costs.

Thanks for posting your Gold Toner info, very helpful for me.

retina_restoration · Jan 26, 2025

Carnie Bob said:
Thanks for posting your Gold Toner info, very helpful for me.

You're welcome, Bob. Considering your vast knowledge on all things "alt print" I wouldn't have thought there was anything you didn't already know about gold chloride toning!

Carnie Bob · Jan 26, 2025

Old dogs need to learn new tricks.. I want to use gold in some of my upcoming work , its been years since I incorporated it in my printing. thanks

bob

koraks · Jan 26, 2025

D_Quinn said:
Finally, does anyone know which process is more archival: salt prints or Van Dyke brown prints?

Neither/both. They each have their own pros & cons. Salted paper prints are more challenging to fix and wash well especially on heavier papers. Insufficient fixing and washing makes the whites go yellow and darker with age, making the prints lose contrast and get an ugly overall appearance (IMO). Van Dyke brown prints are liable to retaining iron salts if the wash water isn't very slightly acidic, and this can also result in yellowing (basically rust forms), but also loss of density.
A properly processed Van Dyke print should not have particularly better or worse longevity than a salt print. It's a finely divided silver image on paper in both cases.

The same toners used for salt prints can be used for Van Dyke. I use the thiourea gold toner from this page for both kinds of prints: https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/GTV/gtv.html
Personally, I make the toner except the gold chloride, and only add the required amount of gold chloride to the volume of toner I will use in a session. The toner without the gold added keeps indefinitely. The gold chloride solution is also perfectly stable. I would not recommend storing the toner with the gold added to it for a long time; impurities in the water or chemistry can easily result in the gold dropping out of solution, which is frustrating (the toner will be slow and ineffective) and expensive at today's market prices for gold/gold chloride.

You can also purchase any commercial gold protective toner marketed for silver gelatin prints; it should work just fine on Van Dykes as well.

revdoc · Jan 26, 2025

Responding to the OP...

My notes on your process:

First wash: I'd increase the citric acid to 1% and extend the time to 5 minutes. You want to make sure you clear out all the unused sensitiser from the paper.
Toning will be at least 5 minutes, if you want an archival print. Clerc's takes about 5 minutes to complete, but can be left longer without any issues. Alkaline gold toners start to bleach the print if left too long.
You don't have to fix twice. I fix 1 minute, with agitation. Fixing just removes some residual byproducts of toning. It doesn't take long, and excessive fixing can bleach the print.
I have to wash for an hour to fully remove fixer, but I don't use hypo clear. You can test for residual hypo by putting a small drop of silver nitrate on the dried print. Any residual fixer will create a small (permanent!) brown spot.

Hope this helps.

cliveh · Jan 26, 2025

If you want a Van Dyke print with archival permanence, wash in a borax solution. You don't need citric acid, or sodium sulphite and definitely not Renaissance Wax . but I have mentioned this before and nobody believes me.

Dan Pavel · Jan 26, 2025

cliveh said:
If you want a Van Dyke print with archival permanence, wash in a borax solution.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.
What would be the recipe for the borax solution and what washing and fixing times are you using?

D_Quinn · Jan 26, 2025

Thanks, everyone, for all the informative input. I really appreciate it!

D_Quinn · Jan 26, 2025

revdoc said:
I have to wash for an hour to fully remove fixer, but I don't use hypo clear. You can test for residual hypo by putting a small drop of silver nitrate on the dried print. Any residual fixer will create a small (permanent!) brown spot.

Hope this helps.

This sounds very useful. Does an 11% silver solution work for this purpose?

D_Quinn · Jan 26, 2025

retina_restoration said:
Whatever you do, I strongly suggest you avoid using that Renaissance Wax! I tried it on a couple of prints, just out of curiosity and it ruined them. Never again.

I'm glad you mentioned this—I was just about to order one

revdoc · Jan 26, 2025

D_Quinn said:
This sounds very useful. Does an 11% silver solution work for this purpose?

Absolutely. The same silver nitrate solution you use for VDB.

D_Quinn · Jan 26, 2025

revdoc said:
Absolutely. The same silver nitrate solution you use for VDB.

Thanks!!

D_Quinn · Jan 27, 2025

By the way, is it okay to do gold toning after fixing, final washing, and drying?
I read somewhere that for Van Dyke Brown prints, toning after fixing is not an issue.

revdoc · Jan 27, 2025

You can do that, but toning before fixing reduces the density loss in fixing.

koraks · Jan 27, 2025

cliveh said:
If you want a Van Dyke print with archival permanence, wash in a borax solution. You don't need citric acid, or sodium sulphite and definitely not Renaissance Wax . but I have mentioned this before and nobody believes me.

It might help if you offered a theoretical explanation for it. Do you mean to use a borax wash for the first rinse, or for the final wash after fixing?
Might be interesting to see @Mike Ware comment on this. My first thought would be that if you use borax for the first wash, the alkalinity would result in the formation of insoluble iron salts that you can then never wash out of the print anymore. So I can see why people may have responded skeptically so far to your suggestion. I'm not aware of borax somehow acting as a chelating agent either (citric acid, on the other hand, does, which probably helps in this application), but maybe I'm overlooking something. Maybe you could fill me in on what I'm missing.

Dan Pavel · Jan 27, 2025

I've googled a bit for using borax with VDB and the only reference I could find is this, in chapter III and it refers to the "Brown Print", a gelatin variant of VDB . It states that it works like this:

"Processing:
DM-water: …………………………………1000ml
borax ……………………………………….. 5gr

Immerse the print for 5 to 7 minutes in this bath, with constant agitation. Borax (instead of straight water for the Van Dyke) is used for the processing; it is quite alkaline and favors the formation of iron hydroxide, which is very difficult to eliminate. The problem can be reduced by immersing at first the print in a bath of salted water, slightly acidified with a pinch of citric acid.

Fixing: 1 minute in a 3% solution of sodium thiosulphate. Overall, the image will darken, but the highlights will clear.

Rinse: After a first bath (5 min.) in a 1% solution of sodium sulphite, rinse in running water for 20 minutes. If no sulphite bath is used, one might have (in case of rather hard water) to acidify the water with a pinch of citric acid and to extend the rinse for 40 minutes."

However, it says nothing about the better archival permanence.

Carnie Bob · Jan 27, 2025

koraks said:
Neither/both. They each have their own pros & cons. Salted paper prints are more challenging to fix and wash well especially on heavier papers. Insufficient fixing and washing makes the whites go yellow and darker with age, making the prints lose contrast and get an ugly overall appearance (IMO). Van Dyke brown prints are liable to retaining iron salts if the wash water isn't very slightly acidic, and this can also result in yellowing (basically rust forms), but also loss of density.
A properly processed Van Dyke print should not have particularly better or worse longevity than a salt print. It's a finely divided silver image on paper in both cases.

The same toners used for salt prints can be used for Van Dyke. I use the thiourea gold toner from this page for both kinds of prints: https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/GTV/gtv.html
Personally, I make the toner except the gold chloride, and only add the required amount of gold chloride to the volume of toner I will use in a session. The toner without the gold added keeps indefinitely. The gold chloride solution is also perfectly stable. I would not recommend storing the toner with the gold added to it for a long time; impurities in the water or chemistry can easily result in the gold dropping out of solution, which is frustrating (the toner will be slow and ineffective) and expensive at today's market prices for gold/gold chloride.

You can also purchase any commercial gold protective toner marketed for silver gelatin prints; it should work just fine on Van Dykes as well.

Not to be argumentative here Koraks but one of the most beautiful set of prints I have ever seen were Japanese Salt Prints that were hand coloured with watercolour pigments. 1875 era which would make them over 150 years old now, I did not notice any deterioration in these prints. Now these prints were done by master photographer and print makers and each segment of the process was done by a different person who probably did everything correct but I must say they were sparkling.

cliveh · Jan 27, 2025

Dan Pavel quotes: -
"Processing:
DM-water: …………………………………1000ml
borax ……………………………………….. 5gr

But I use 50gr of borax in 1000ml and fix for 2 to 4 minutes in plain hypo (50gm per 1 litre of water). Wash for 30 minutes in running water.

I have had these images for years and completely light stable.

koraks · Jan 27, 2025

@cliveh do you print with a masked border so you can verify that the whites really end up paper white?

cliveh · Jan 27, 2025

koraks said:
@cliveh do you print with a masked border so you can verify that the whites really end up paper white?

No and I expose the coated paper when dry.

koraks · Jan 27, 2025

cliveh said:
I expose the coated paper when dry.

Obviously.
Not masking the borders means you don't know whether your highlights clear. Given te pH of borax, I suspect they don't.

nmp · Jan 27, 2025

cliveh said:
No and I expose the coated paper when dry.

You say "washing in borax" - this is post-fixing, right?

:Niranjan.

cliveh · Jan 27, 2025

nmp said:
You say "washing in borax" - this is post-fixing, right?

:Niranjan.

No, I shouldn't have phrased it that way. The borax solution is after exposure, then rinsing and then fixing.

Gold/Thiourea Toner and Archival Process for Van Dyke Prints

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Gold/Thiourea Toner and Archival Process for Van Dyke Prints

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