This antique print Pilgrimage to Canterbury was published in London in 1817.
On the reverse side are the pencil marks of a rare print dealer who framed and sold it around 1900. Not knowing about the acids in wood the framer at that time put a couple of scraps of paper behind the print then backed it with thin sheets of pine wood. Highly acidic.
You can see from the first photo that the acid from the wood has leached through the back of the print and severely discolored large portions of the image. In this case the print was removed from the frame and de-acidfied. This process brought out more of the original color of the print.
In the photo above you can see the print after it has been de-acidfied and mounted to linen. We will return it to it’s original frame and use Museum Plexiglass and acid free backing to preserve it for it’s next 200 years.
