Who's printing on glass?

[jorj]

Hi all,

I've been working for about a half year with gum and casein prints on glass. I'm wondering if there's anyone lurking that's doing anything similar:

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There's woefully little information about this that's easily searchable on the 'net, so all pointers appreciated.

-- Jorj
www.jorj.org

 

[R Shaffer]

Can't say I know of anyone doing gum or casein on glass. I was doing some casein prints several weeks ago, but not on glass.

If you search some of the posts by wildbillbugman he has been working with printing on glass and just posted some interesting stuff on subbing glass on the yahoo carbon group
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Hopefully he'll chime in here.

Took a look at your blog post. Pretty cool stuff with your tri-color casein on glass. I made my casein with dry milk and then used dry pigments for the emulsion. Much tougher than gum. I don't have the dry pigments to try a tri-color and found the watercolor pigments did not work as well for me with casein.

 

[CMB]

Check out vol 4, #5 of "The Enamelists Newsletter" (Sept?, 1985) which describes the "use of glass plates for the transparent positive which necessitated a transfer using collodion".

Also Chapter VI of Marton's "Modern Methods of Carbon Printing" (1905) discusses "the development of carbon or Pigment Pictures upon...Opal Glass."

 

[jorj]

Thanks for the pointers.

I've got some estar melenex that I'd like to try printing on; I'm hopeful that I might make that work, since I managed casein on glass. The estar failed spectacularly for gum. As did glass.

I'll track down The Enamelists Newsletter, and will probably wind up playing with Silane functional PVOH... just what I needed, another chem in the basement

 

[holmburgers]

(there was a url link here which no longer exists) on the topic of safety & silanization from (there was a url link here which no longer exists).

I'd really love to see what that stacked-glass casein print looks like from an angle that shows its construction.

CMB, your reading recommendations are always excellent.

 

[jorj]

Thanks holmburgers. I'll read up some more on silanization.

Regarding the construction, here are a few shots that I hope will show you the detail that you're curious about.

The print is 8x10 on 10x12 sheets of glass.

This shows the five layers and backing vellum. The layers are M/C/Y/C/Y.

This front-lit image lets you inspect the top yellow layer (whose emulsion is currently exposed; I meant to print this layer flipped!).

The center of the stacked print, viewed from an angle:

And dead-on, same exact exposure and light conditions:

 

[holmburgers]

That's very cool.

A print like this would be so novel to the average person, and I think that's the biggest attribute of alternative printing methods. We forget that photographs can be physical objects, and something like this really drives it home; particularly by having a finite ideal viewing angle.