Greetings everyone 

(sorry for the duplicate post but hopefully the formatting is better)

I am redesigning an existing small wall mounted case that will display some small ancient gilt bronze Chinese Buddhas from the Tang dynasty (circa 600-900 AD). I want to change the existing tan colored fabric inside the case and rewrap it with a new fabric and then placing labels inside. This display case will be enclosed in a plexiglas vitrine and will not have any ventilation. 

I am concerned about having any labels inside the case which might off-gas or contaminate the bronze artifacts. Previously our labels were hung on a sign outside of the case but they were hard to read. 

Normally our labels are printed in-house on an HP laser printer using HP toner. We usually only print in black ink on eggshell colored Canson MiTients pastel paper and then adhere the pastel paper to conservation foam board or a thick archival mat board using a type of 3m adhesive spray. 

For this redesign I am changing the background fabric of the display case to a reddish brown colored fabric (the fabric comes from Creation Baumann and has been oddy tested). We want the labels inside the case to match the fabric color and plan to print the background color with our inhouse HP laser printer printed on the same pastel paper or with color copy paper. If we are not successful with matching the fabric color we may send the print job to a small printing company nearby. 

Are there issues with off gassing from printing inks and printing paper being used for the labels? Are there concerns with any of our label materials? Are there better materials to look at for creating small labels inside of our vitrine? 

The only safe option I can think of is keeping the labels outside of our case but we don't have an attractive way of doing that without completely redesigning the entire case. 

Many thanks for any suggestions you can provide! 


Holly Chase 
Museum Coordinator 
Chen Art Gallery 
Torrance, CA
www.chenartgallery.org
email: holly.chase at sunrider.com 

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