Years ago when I was serious about monochrome photography (and unable to afford being serious about color), I used to mount my best prints on thick card and matte them for display in frames. The difference between a loose, flimsy print and the finished, framed one was night and day. The mounting press I used was straight out of the tool box favored by the enforcers of the Spanish Inquisition. A massive acme screw on a cantilever placed immense pressure on the print while the hot platen helped melt the adhesive. Heat setting was, well, basic, as in “On” or “Off”. The same press was used to confer high gloss on prints, before the days of RC papers which came with their own, not very good, bluish sheen built in. You squeegeed the print onto a high gloss metal plate, hoping all the air was out, and heated it in the press. The nauseating smell of the formaldehyde which conveyed the gloss is with me to this day. I forget where I got this obscure instrument of torture, but I do recall it cost me all of five British Pounds back in the days before devaluation. That meant $14 in 1973 money, or $67 in today’s (2005) money. Not a lot, in other words, though I had to rewire the thing and generally mess with the wonky switch. But it worked.

This was, by the way, well before the days of Acid Free Boards and Archival Prints. Strange how those ancient monochrome 16″x 20″prints look fine to this day….

The Spanish Press moved on to its eleventh owner when I left the United Kingdom, as the former Colonies neither recognized 220 volts mains power or looked too kindly on a poor immigrant lugging Torquemada’s 50 pound favorite to the shores of the New World. And so it was relegated to the dusty recesses of memory, that foul press and its revolting formaldehyde odor.

Now my default print size, 8″x 10″ was not too bad when it came to handing prints around and asking “Do you like this one?”. But when I got serious about once more showing my work, or at least giving it away to others in a presentable format, memories of the Torquemada Special came flooding back. (See Really Large Prints where the author standardized on 13″ x 19″ prints for his best efforts, below). So I did a bit of shopping and discovered that the heated press situation is even worse than that for gasoline. The latter provides the consumer with an oligopoly, a few vendors pretending to compete but, realistically, fixing the price in a smoke filled room. By contrast, the photographic heated press world, an altogether smaller economy, has no competition whatsoever. In the United States you buy a press from Seal, aka Bienfang, or you do without. When you come down to it, a heated press is nothing more than a couple of slabs of cast iron, one of which contains a heater element, a foam pad, and yes, you guessed it, a massive lever (the acme thread has finally moved on), a couple of springs, two light bulbs – “On” and “Heating” – a thermostat and a cord and plug. So why does this nineteenth century piece of engineering crudity come with a price tag of $1,100 and up, you ask?

Tried to buy a cheap ladder recently? Same deal. It’s called liability lawyers. The members (a suitable description if ever there was one) of the tort bar have made sure that the finished product sells for four times its intrinsic value. Every time some twit falls off the ladder or burns himself using the mounting press, there go the legal – and product – costs. Add greedy home grown labor which spends its “sick leave” watching aforesaid members of the bar advertising their wares on television, and you have a prescription for an overpriced product.

So I did a bit more research. Seems that the Seal presses made back in the first 80 years of the twentieth century came with asbestos wiring. Now, bad memories of Torquemada’s Special dancing in my mind, I realized I did not particularly want to rewire a Genuine Seal original, attractive as it may be, for lack of full body armor and breathing equipment. So I sniffed around on ePrey, that home from home for liars, cheats and thieves, and determined that the current (as in 30 years old) line of Seal presses, distinguished by the suffix “M” in the model number (don’t ask, it stands for Masterpiece. Can you believe that?) as in 160M, 210M, etc. can be found now and then for under $500. That’s still eight times in today’s money compared to the cost of the Torquemada Original, but it beats paying $1,100 for the original cardboard packaging. So I waited patiently and a 160M joined the household, safely stored out of the way in the workshop some fifty yards from the main home. Cast iron being what it is, the UPS man used a dolly rather than risk a premature hernia. No use in tempting fate. Another $50 saw me as the proud owner of a used Seal tacking iron for attaching the mounting tissue to the print and mount.

So now I’m into this dry mounting exercise for some $450.

So now I’m stuck with mounting the prints and have absolutely no clue or recollection how to do it. I run to the Internet, read fifteen conflicting accounts, only to find definitive instructions in the packet of mounting tissue by …. you guessed it …. Seal/Bienfang. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the lack of competition. Phew! You would think that the guys who make the press and the tissue know their stuff. And indeed they do. Things go without a hitch and three lovely 8″x 10″ prints are even now winging their way to him in time for his exhibition. No question he will win. Two identical prints, one held up with thumb tacks, the other nicely mounted, is no competition.

The moral of this tale? Well there are two. The first is that a properly dry mounted print with a decent mat is THE way to showcase your work. No, not one of those poncy things where you stick one edge to the back of the mat to let it “breathe and expand” only to cockle in two weeks, using the excuse that the “Art” world accepts no less – mainly because the Art world is broke. We are talking heat sealed here.

The second is that you should copy this piece to anyone you know involved in Chinese manufacture of basic equipment and get the price down from $1,100 to $99.99.

All photographers will be in your debt.