This set of notes was compiled by Lee Littlewood, following the 2001 Conclave. Rick Glawson gave a seminar on creating gum decals. Special thanks to Lee for capturing some of Rick's knowledge, and then again for sharing it with us here! MJ

Decalomaniac

Decalomania [from French, décalcomanie]: Art or process of transferring designs from specially prepared paper to china, glass, marble, etc., and permanently fixing them thereto.

These are notes from a demonstration by Rick Glawson on Feb.11, 2001 at his shop in Wilmington California. Total time was about 2 hours, so this is a condensed version with much good stuff left out. Comments in italic are Lee's. Lee Littlewood, October 2001.

The introduction was a bit of history: back in the 1300s art teachers used transfers in “instant art” workshops for the gentry. They would print a mezzotint in black ink on stiff paper, then varnish over the ink side and smooth it to the back of glass and let dry. (The dimensions were severely limited by the small size of available flat glass.) Once the varnish was dry, they would dampen the paper with water and rub the paper off until just the ink layer was still visible, then let the water dry and varnish over the image. Now the student could paint areas of color behind the black-lined images and have an “instant painting” when seen from the front. Sounds like a good way to pay the rent for ye olde itinerant painter.

In 1800 a new method of printing was invented. Lithographers draw on a smooth stone with a grease crayon and then etch the exposed stone with an acid. To print, they dampen the stone with water and roll oil colors over it – the oily ink is repelled by the water and only sticks to the oily, crayon image. Press a sheet of paper against the stone and a very detailed print can be ‘pulled.’ A problem that arose was that the paper buckled from the moisture. One way to combat that was to coat the paper with something that would slow the water absorption (‘sizing’ the paper). One material that works is a very thin layer of glue, which in those days was hide glue, made from boiling animal hides and bones. [As an aside, the hide glue that some signmakers use for gluechipping is available today because it is used in vast quantities by the paper industry for sizing paper.]

The next step came by using paper coated with an extra-heavy size layer, printing on the size with oil colors, and thus create an image that can be transferred off the paper by redissolving the glue layer. By the 1880s “decal transfers” were a real business. Rick sells a copy of the Palm Brothers catalog which lists one decal for the side of omnibuses that was 14” x 92” (it came in 6 pieces). Many of the old decals were made using gold leaf or (better, brighter) tinted aluminum leaf, so the colors actually glow in the light – look at old safes and sewing machines. Your basic pinstriped, Kandy Kolor treadle sewing machine. Depending on which way it was printed, a decal could be varnish-transferred to the back of glass or adhered over an opaque surface. They were very useful for images on non-flat surfaces which are hard to print on – rounded tops of cracker tins, curved glass beer signs. They were and are used to apply decorations to ceramic plates and cups – paper and glue would burn off in the kiln and the special inks would fuse with the outer glaze, making a very durable but finely detailed decoration.

By the 1950s things had gone downhill; “Very degenerate” says Rick. Decals were made with a clear overprinted layer which held them together when they were floated off the paper. This explains why people always say,“Where’d you get the decals?” while you’re overvarnishing some window lettering. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who spent hours floating little “United States Air Force” decals onto my plastic model planes. So when we think back to “The Old Decals” we are only remembering one type of transfer, and it gets in the way of imagining what the earlier users were familiar with. Rick says: “Remember the technology they had available - it was all about oil & water.”

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The mechanics of the original, varnish decal transfer are pretty straightforward – it’s all about oil and water. The paper usually has two layers – a thin, tough paper like drafting vellum laminated to something soft and felty, like coffee filter paper. (“Duplex” paper has two layers, but “Simplex” does too. Somebody probably makes a one-layer decal paper with a name like ‘Noplex’.) The thin paper layer is covered with some sort of gelatin/gum arabic/hide glue layer which is dry to the touch but can dissolve with water. On this is printed a design in oil colors (usually a screen printed lacquer ink), with or without a layer of clear overprinted over the whole design. The decal paper itself will keep the design’s parts in register (like vinyl transfer tape) while some oil-based adhesive sticks the design to a surface. Once the design is adhered, the decal paper is removed by getting it wet and dissolving the water-soluble glue layer, then sliding the paper off the design, which remains stuck to the surface.

Decals can be printed ‘forward’, so they can go directly onto an opaque surface or ‘reversed’ so they can go behind clear glass. It is possible to translate a ‘forward’ decal to ‘reversed’ by sticking it to a clean piece of decal paper and then removing the original decal paper. To do this, work up a slurry of adhesive from the decal paper around the design and smoosh it over the face of the image. Now stick it to a new piece of decal paper, adhesive sides touching, and put it under a book to dry flat. When dry, moisten the original paper from behind and remove it, leaving the image stuck to the new paper but flipped over.

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So, now to do one. First we screenprinted the American Sign Museum logo in black ink on duplex decal paper. As it happened, the image had been set up for glass – it was reading right-to-left, not the usual direction, so a transfer to glass was easy: 1) cut the paper roughly to proper size, 2) with a small sponge and a little water, rub up a slurry of adhesive from the paper and cover the image with slurry, 3) press the image onto a piece of glass and squeegee out most of the air bubbles, 4) let dry. When dry 5) moisten the back of the decal paper and roll off the top layer of soft, felty paper – it actually came off in one sheet, pretty easy. 6) Now you can see the ink through the thin but tough second layer of paper – pop any air bubbles or rewet and use a brayer (but then it has to dry again). 7) Moisten the thin paper carefully and, 8) strip it off, leaving the ink stuck to the glass. Surprisingly, you could 9) wipe off the smears of adhesive around and in the image with a wet foam brush and paper towel quite easily – the ink kept moisture from going under it. Now you’re in the position of a backed-up gold leaf job – the lines are on and edges are clean, but if any water runs over the image the adhesive will redissolve and the lines will scoot around.. So, as with a gold leaf job, 10) go over the ink lines with varnish or color to protect them from the dreaded window-washer.

We didn’t do a forward transfer but we talked through it. In this case the image is printed with the highlights first and the base color last, so you can’t see much of the image. So, 1) using a light table or holding it up to the light where you can see its shape, mark some reference marks on the front and make some corresponding marks on the substrate. 2) Varnish (quicksize is good) either the substrate or the decal and let it tack up. 3) Roll the decal into place and squeegee bubbles out. 4) Not waiting for the varnish to dry, wet the paper and remove it, 5) wet the inner paper and remove it. Now, 6) you can pop any bubbles still remaining and, 7) wipe off the varnish smears with whatever - the old books say kerosene or gasoline. The decal doesn’t need a varnish to protect it from moisture, but it will make it more durable – remember to sponge off any water adhesive still on the decal’s face before overvarnishing.

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Some random bits of information that Rick generated during the demo:

• Decal lacquer doesn’t wrinkle in water; neither does Krylon spray clear. Unfortunately, NazDar has discontinued all the colors in the DL series, keeping only the DL111Black, DL112White, and DL110Clear. They say their all-in-one 7200 lacquer ink series, “Works as well but is not as flexible as the DL series was, needs to be sandwiched between clears.”
• NazDar makes a printable decal adhesive, waterbased (#2040). You can mix up a ‘slurry’ adhesive with 1 part decal adhesive & 4 parts water, keep in a squirt bottle.
  
• For a printable gold leaf size, mix NazDar PX textile ink (use the gold color) with up to 40% LeFranc & Bourgeois slow size.
  
• White glue (Elmer’s, ...) can be used as the waterbase adhesive on old, dried decals. Matte medium is not as good.
  
• For good artwork, draw on satin airbrush frisket with a felt pen. This is probably as good as it gets for tracing from an original without damaging it - frisket has a mild, repositionable adhesive.
  
• For a two-tone gold job with a marble background in only two trips: Watergild and screenprint bright lines on the job. At the shop, faux marble a piece of decal paper with oil colors. Pick the area of marble you like and print the matte centers with bronze powder ink; heck, maybe print the outline and shade too. At the job, varnish the image area, adhere the ‘marble’ over the bright lines, remove the decal paper and extra marble with water, varnish the outer edges and scram.
  
• Yes, you can run decal paper through a copier. Rick showed a cornerpiece from an old safe he had traced, then copied onto decal paper and painted over the black lines with the required color combination in 1Shot. Mailed the piece to the client. If you spray Krylon clear or shellac to seal the glue you can run decal paper through an inkjet copier, but the result may have fugitive colors.
  
• Many tin signs were decalled and then clearcoated with shellac.
• When others will be applying the decal, give it extra toughness. Rick had a little decal from a coin-operated machine which said “Drop Coin Here” with a pointing hand, all in gold with black outline. So he printed a clear ‘bubble’contour, then sized and gilded, then black outlines and another bubble of clear over all. The trick was keeping the bubble outlines very close to the art, so it didn’t look like a 1950’s decal.
  
• In some old signs you find “half and half” leaf – one side is gold and the other side is silver. It was fractionally cheaper than all gold.
  
• Convex glass signs. You can find registration marks etched into the glass, so they probably printed them as Rick does now, in a number of passes, with a loose screen and a curved squeegee. For one beer sign, Rick did artwork of a moose in pen and ink, screenprinted it on decal paper, and after the gold and colors were in he transferred it to the glass – even though it was big the paper was flexible enough to conform to the curved glass.
  
• The problem with cutting extremely small letters on a vinyl cutter is not the machine or the blade, it is that the cut vinyl won’t stay on the release paper. If you peel the vinyl and apply it to the shiny glue side of decal paper it will hold tightly. Now run through your plotter and cut even extremely small shapes. Weed and apply transfer tape as usual, then damp the decal paper to slide it off the cut vinyl. Rinse the gelatin off the vinyl’s adhesive before applying. [This was in reference to cutting small shapes out of vinyl to use as a sandblast resist for mother-of-pearl monograms. To continue with that job: after you have masked and sandblasted out your tiny shell monograms, xerox the design on the paper side of some duplex paper, then tape down on a light table glue-side-up. Now you can see the design, so damp the glue and transfer the teeny pieces of shell with a tweezer till you have the monogram reassembled. The xerox on the paper shows the orientation when you apply it to a tacky surface, and the duplex paper will come off with water. Talk about a convoluted concept...]
  
• “Old techniques generally had a soft edge.”
  

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