THE CARE OF PICTURES AND PRINTS. 87 



of a collection may reasonably sacrifice a few drawings in his lifetime 

 (and the sacrifice is only partial) to the satisfaction of seeing them more 

 frequently and of ornamenting his walls with them. An intermediate 

 plan with regard to water-color drawings is to have case-frames that 

 allow one drawing to be easily substituted for another when the 

 mounts are of the same size. The drawing is then exhibited for a 

 short time only, and the owner has the refreshment of change on the 

 walls of his room. The same plan may be followed with prints, simply 

 for the sake of change. 



With regard to the keeping of drawings in portfolios, there are rea- 

 sons for believing that portfolios are not entirely safe. I have known 

 a case in which prints in portfolios suffered visibly from damp, when 

 every possible precaution seemed to have been taken for their pres- 

 ervation. The portfolios were kept in a closet six feet by eight, which 

 was selected because it had no outer wall, and, though there was not a 

 fireplace in the closet itself, the door of it opened on a room where a 

 fire was constantly kept. The closet was believed to be the driest 

 place in the house, and the house itself was not in a damp situation, 

 being exposed to all the winds that blow, and built upon rather elevated 

 ground. It happened, however, that the outer walls were built of a 

 porous kind of sandstone, which retained moisture in the winter, and 

 as the portfolios in which the prints were kept were made of mill-board, 

 also a retainer of moisture, the prints were really damp in spite of the 

 carefully chosen closet. They showed the signs of damp as much, al- 

 most, as if they had been hung upon a damp wall with a mill-board 

 backing to each frame. It is plain, then, that the portfolio does not 

 aiford absolute security, and, indeed, the mill-board of which portfolios 

 are commonly made is in itself an element of danger. Shallow tin 

 boxes, with removable lids made like those of pill-boxes, are much safer 

 than the common portfolio. I have alluded in another paper (on the 

 " Poor Collector) * to cabinets with shelves of thin wood separated 

 from each other by small intervals. Prints or water-color drawings 

 may be kept in such cabinets without other protection than a sheet of 

 paper as a protection against the small quantity of dust that finds its 

 way into the interior. The cabinets should be placed in rooms where 

 there are regular fires, and when the room is thoroughly warmed the 

 doors of the cabinets should be occasionally left open and their con- 

 tents exposed to the air. As to the wood of which they are to be 

 made, it should be one of the least absorbent woods. 



Well- closed cabinets or tin boxes are the best protection against 

 dust. If portfolios are used, they ought always to have flaps, as with- 

 out them dust is sure to get in and spoil the edges and sometimes part 

 of the margins of the prints. The effect of dust in course of time is 

 to discolor paper permanently. Suppose you lay a sheet of paper on 

 another that is rather larger, so that the second shall not be entirely 



* "Longman's Magazine," September, 1885. 



