Hot off the heels of my glass-on-casein in the annual juried Phillips’ Mill exhibition, I’m looking at my next set of research: fumed silica.

This piece is a gold-toned kallitype, printed on Herschel (a handmade linen paper) pre-treated with fumed silica. The pretreatment generally deepens the blacks, with some other more subtle differences in contrast and overall response. I’ve been slowly pulling together a project to more scientifically test different kinds of fumed silica with different Kallitype processes, and I’m almost there. Except the money to fund it. :O

SO… look for a Kickstarter campaign soon! I’m hoping to get enough funding for a couple of weeks of dedicated research. I predict the results will have application across all siderotype printing techniques and I’m really excited to move this along!