WHAT is chine collé? A rough translation of this French term is “thin paper attached with glue”. Chine refers to thin tissue paper, traditionally imported from China, Japan and India. Collé refers to the glue or paste used to attach this thin tissue to heavier Western made plate paper.
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| Cherubs, Treatment with pockets of delamination |
The smooth surface of the Oriental tissue papers accepts finer printing detail than the more coarsely textured plate papers. Tissue papers are, however quite weak. Pasting them to thicker paper gives them strength and stability.
Chine collé prints enjoyed great popularity in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when they were used for high quality art prints and book illustrations. They commanded higher prices than the same image printed on ordinary plate paper. Nowadays, chine collés are rarely produced outside of small fine art editions.
Primary sources describe more than one method of attaching the thin China paper to the plate paper. English printers typically pasted or flour dusted the tissue just prior to printing. French printers tended to use dry, pre-pasted tissue, activating the adhesive at the time of printing by laying it on damp plate paper. Sometimes no adhesive was used at all – printers simply relied on the very high pressure of the printing process to bond the papers together.
Chine collés are subject to the same damages as other types of prints, but their layered structure makes them more sensitive to water based conservation treatments. Water can cause the two layers to lift at the edges, to separate in central bubble pockets (see illustration), or to delaminate entirely. Stains can usually be removed or reduced by techniques such as vapour bleaching, float washing, and flushing water through the papers on the suction table.
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| Cherubs, Treatment, with papers rejoined |
Despite such precautions, delaminations can occur during treatment. Sometimes minimal intervention, such as drying and pressing will remedy the problem. In difficult cases the papers must be separated entirely (a slow and painstaking process!) and reattached in their original position using a clear Mylar support and thin wheat starch paste.
Because printers are such a diverse group, and use so many methods (published and proprietary) to join the two sheets of paper, one can never be entirely sure just how a particular print will behave with even as simple a treatment as humidification and flattening. The main points to remember when treating chine collé prints are to start slowly to learn from the behaviour of each individual print, and to keep a weather eye out for trouble.
