The Largest Chrysotype Ever Printed

This print contains 24 ml of 10% gold, about 2 grams of pure gold, which I sensitized by mixing it with 36 ml of ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate. Ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate is made by dissolving green crystals in water to make up a 40% solution (in this case 16 grams of crystals in 40 ml of water). It's very simle and, unlike gold, inexpensive (50 grams of afo costs about $10). Then I added 7 drops of 1% ascorbic acid (vitamin c dissolved in distilled water) for each 10 ml -- 28 drops. I mixed the two together and began brushing. It took over an hour, including my break for a gin martini because my legs and hands were cramping. I used a paper sized from the factory with gelatin, Arches Aquarelle hot-press. It was the only suitable paper for printing gold (not every paper works) available that large. After an hour of drying, I mounted it in a homemade contact frame, which consisted of a sheet of 3/8" acrylic in a wood frame. The negative was printed for me by Bobby Valentine at Gicleeprint.net. It took MONTHS to find a printer who was willing to take on the challenge of such a large inkjet negative. Bobby drum-scanned the original 6.5"x8.5" sheet of ilm at 3200 dpi and printed the neg at over 400 dpi. I held the paper tight against the neg with 9 wood cross bars each with 15 wine bottle corks screwed on. The corks kept the pressure precise against the negative.

Clearing the iron from the paper was a nightmare -- the printed image is still light-sensitive until the iron compound is neutralized. And if you don't get it all out, it oxidizes, turns black and the picture is ruined. When a print is cleared, the image is composed of nothing at all except the gold. I inflated a 10' diameter wading pool in my upstairs workroom and washed the print in water, hydrochloric acid, more water, bleach, tetrasodium edta, water, dithionite, water, suflite and a long water wash. I got all the iron out!