This lovely autochrome arrived at my door very badly and mysteriously damaged. I can't blame the packaging, there were other autochromes in the parcel and they survived the trip. It was a real shame because it was a very nice one, very vibrant and a good size. Sunday, I attempted to operate on old Rosie, to at least see what the inside looks like, poke around, and see if I can't glue is back together a little.
Did get it open with fairly little damage, scuffed up the tape in some places that I didn't need to.
Working with old emulsion is like working with gold leaf - very very fragile. It was very brittle too. I did manage to do a nice job on one of the cracks, but the other, the main one, couldn't be helped, and I've made a few marks on it now, so I stopped there before I made it even worse.
You can see here the crack on the left glued together nicely, but the main one wouldn't budge, and I chipped it in some critical places. The cracks on the top left became more visible too, once they moved around a little. The marks at the top are just where I have to re-tape the glass together - I need to get some black florist tape to clean that up. So what did we learn on Sunday? Don't fiddle unless you're sure you can fix!
