Toning with tea

Hi All,

For quite a long time, I was looking for a brown toner that could provide the same tone as very olds albumen prints, unsuccessfully!

Yesterday, I tried Tea...and it works great! The border is toned too, so the print looks like an old one (FB paper, of course).

Aesthetic is great, but what's about longevity? does the tea attack the image? anybody has an experience? any feedback would be great!!

Regards

Hi Daniel

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I did tea tonings 15 years ago and they still look okay. Tea is quite

an old trick so it should be okay!

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Good light!

It should be pretty stable. I have done it, too, as long as twenty

years ago, and the color is still there. Just think about how hard it

is to remove tea stains from fabrics....

Tea actually is not a toner in the sense that it alters the color of

the image-forming silver, like a sulfide toner does, but it is

adiscoloration of the base (paper and gelatin coating). The black

silver image is unaffected.

I do not have experiance using it like the other two posters, but

according to professors that I had at the art institute of boston,

they all said that it is not archival.

But hey, who cares. Print it again in 25 years if it starts to

look a little gloomy.

Sally Mann tones with tea. Coffee works, too, as I discovered when my

brother spilled an extra-large cup of it all over a table where I had

30 of my 8x10 prints spread out. He managed to hit every print!

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I've tried tea a few times. The best kind to use are the cheap,

garden-variety black teas, as they have the most tannin.

At a workshop a few years ago Jay Dusard demonstrated tea toning

using simple bags of instant tea (he joked that Tetley was the

photographer's tea de jour!). Anyways, the process worked quite well.

An added feature is that tea, unlike some toners, possesses few toxic

and environmentally harmful ingredients. Try drinking Selenium toner

sometime.

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Asked whether or ot the process was archival Dusard or his co-teacher

Michael Schultz pointed to oriental papers toned with tea that had

lasted a few thousand years.

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Seriously, the process is well worth an afternoon's experiment.

Bob

Thank you for your contribution, as usual, this forum is very helpful

for any concern one may have!

Regards.

Is Black tea something that is marked on the package? Or is just

marked tea? Is instant coffee going to work? or are we talking about

percolating?

FWIW, I've had spilled coffee take the little blue lines right off

ordinary binder paper. It was pretty bad coffee though!

Jonathan,

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I don't think it usually says black tea. Any cheapo regular tea is

good - Tetley, Master Choice, Milford, Lipton.

It doesn't work on RC paper.

Couldn't tell ya about the coffee. Get in there and experiment!

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Cheers,

Try also some green tea , good one . fresly brewed, and tone

your paper with it!

Also try different dilutions , mix it with coffe, experiment, have fun ,

and remember that tea usually lowers the conrtrast of the

image, so print accordingly.

It is a great medium...

I will try this......Domenico did you get my j-peg safe and sound,

if so, e-mail me.

Tom Baril, photographer and master printer, formerly Mapplethorp's

printer, tones his prints with tea. They are beautiful!