Print and poster restoration
What conservation can do for an editioned print or a poster, and why on an edition the market compares your sheet with a clean one.
Prints are the medium where condition is most directly priced, because the comparison is exact. A saleroom valuing your impression is looking at what other impressions of the same edition have made, and those impressions are numerous and often better preserved than yours. That makes conservation a straightforwardly commercial decision here in a way it is not for a unique work.
What can be put right
Tape and residue in the margins
Almost every print framed before conservation practice became normal is hinged with something it should not have been. Margin staining from tape is common, visible, and frequently reversible — and because it sits in the margin rather than the image, the improvement to how the sheet catalogues is out of proportion to the work involved.
Handling creases and cockling
Soft creases through the sheet from being rolled, carried or stored badly, and rippling from damp. Humidification and flattening deal with most of it. A hard crease that has broken the paper fibres or cracked the ink film is a different matter and will always be detectable.
Foxing and light staining
Treated the same way as any work on paper, with one difference that matters commercially: foxing in the margin and foxing across the image are very different problems. The first is often worth addressing, the second sets a ceiling on what the sheet will make whatever is done to it.
Linen-backing, for posters
Standard and expected practice in the poster market rather than a black mark — a paper conservator mounts the sheet onto linen, which stabilises it, allows tears and losses to be filled, and is how most collectable posters are traded. It is not appropriate for an editioned fine art print, where backing a sheet would harm rather than help the value.
What cannot be undone
Trimmed margins cannot be restored, and on an edition they are expensive — the sheet size is part of what the edition is, and a print cut down to fit a frame is catalogued as such for the rest of its life. Fading in a screenprint's flat colour cannot be reversed, and is very obvious against a good impression. Everything done must be disclosed: a specialist examining a sheet under raking light and ultraviolet will find the work, and an undisclosed repair discovered during a consignment costs far more than it saved.
Is it worth doing?
Frequently yes, for exactly the reason the comparison is exact — a clean impression and a stained one of the same edition are priced apart, and modest conservation can close much of that gap. Heavy intervention rarely repays itself. On Banksy and the wider urban contemporary market, condition is judged against what that edition normally looks like rather than against perfection, which is worth knowing before spending anything: some wear is expected and treating it can look worse than leaving it.
The work is carried out by a conservation studio we work with, not in-house, and the cost is quoted before anything begins. How restoration works here sets out the whole of that arrangement. If you do not yet know what the work is, a valuation comes first and costs nothing — it is the thing that decides whether any of this is worth spending.