This is also one of the old samples I found from my old project box: cochineal stain on glossy photo paper. It has been on dark archive box about eight years and the colours were saved very vivid and bright. I’m interesting to see, if the dye will then fade on sun, since there are very opposite opinions on this, other saying that cochineal is lightfast, others saying that the lightfastness is really poor. I get it that when dyeing yarn, the yarn itself (if it is wool, silk, cotton, linen or something else) and the mordant used affect to the lightfastness a lot. I wonder if the paper I’ve used also affects. This one is cochineal stained on glossy photo paper, which is not often so good quality as the matte art papers. I just don’t have any cochineal stained matte art papers at hand right now, but I will make them at some point just to find out the difference.
If this works in anthotype (ie. if the colour will fade on sun), this would be very interesting dye to use, since the changes in pH will affect it so easily. In acid it will turn yellow and alkalines turn it purple. I’ve used only mild household chemicals for this, lemon juice for acids and baking soda for alkalines, and it’s relatively easy to make very vividly patterned papers with just one dye.
Using alkalines and acids to tweak paper won’t matter in this anthotype project, since the prints are not meant to be last – anthotype prints are temporary images anyway.
(The paper on background is stained with red onion.)
Anthotypical 