Aged silk backing removed, cleaned and rebacked
Calligraphy on Silk
A calligraphy work yellowed and spotted, on a silk backing that had browned with age, taken off its old mount, cleaned and rebacked.
On arrival
Condition
Two separate problems, which is common on older mounted works. The calligraphy itself had turned a deep yellow and carried small brown mould spots throughout. The silk backing had browned and gone mouldy in its own right.
A backing in that condition is not a neutral support any more. It holds moisture against the work and keeps feeding the spotting on the sheet in front of it, so cleaning the calligraphy without dealing with the mount would have bought very little time.
What we did
Treatment
The old silk backing was removed and the calligraphy cleaned once it was free of it, which is the only order that works: nothing applied to the front will hold while the mount behind it is still the source.
A fresh backing was then added.
In detail
Before and after
Detail 02
Detail 03
Detail 04
The finished work
Outcome
The yellow cast and the spotting are gone entirely, and the characters read black against a clean ground.
On calligraphy the ground matters more than on a painted work. There is nothing else in the composition, so any unevenness left behind would be the first thing the eye finds.
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