Accession VN-S01
Photo sleeves, 6×4 in, pack of 50
Clear uncoated polyester, open on one short edge, sized for postcards and standard prints.
£12inc. VAT where due
Drawer S · sleeves and albums
Sleeves · polyester
Photo sleeves and albums
Clear polyester sleeves for prints and postcards, and slip-in albums with archival pages — for keeping photographs where you can see them without handling them.
Fingerprints are the commonest harm a photograph suffers. Skin leaves oil and salts on the emulsion, and they etch in over years as a permanent print of their own. A clear sleeve lets the photograph be passed round a table, turned over and read on the back, with no finger ever on the image.
Sleeves · polyester or paper
Polyester or paper: which sleeve?
There are two honest choices for a single photograph. Paper enclosures are opaque, breathe well and suit prints that are stored and seldom looked at. Polyester sleeves are clear, smooth and chemically stable: they contain no plasticisers, no coatings and nothing that migrates into the print. They are the right choice for photographs that people will want to look at.
We stock polyester only, and we chose it over polypropylene for its clarity and stiffness. A polyester sleeve stays flat and supports a curling print; it does not cloud with age. What to avoid entirely is soft PVC — the floppy, slightly sticky plastic of cheap wallets and old photo pages. PVC gives off acidic vapours as it ages and can leave a film on the very surface it was bought to protect.
One caution: polyester carries a light static charge. That is no problem for sound prints but it can lift flaking material, so a photograph with a cracked or powdery surface is better wrapped loosely in tissue and left alone.
Sleeves · sizes and prices
Sleeve sizes
Both sleeves are open on one short edge so a print slides in without catching. Choose the size that is at least as large as the item; a slightly larger sleeve is fine, a tight one is not.
| Item | Takes | Good for | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo sleeves, 6×4 in, pack of 50 | Items up to 6 × 4 in | Standard prints, postcards, cartes and small cabinet prints | £12 |
| Photo sleeves, 10×8 in, pack of 25 | Items up to 10 × 8 in | Enlargements, school and wedding prints, large single negatives | £15 |
| Slip-in album, 40 pages | Two 6 × 4 in prints a side | Sets of family prints you want to browse | £32 |
Postcards deserve a word of their own. A written postcard has two faces worth keeping, and a clear sleeve lets you read the message and see the picture without taking it out. The 6×4 sleeve fits nearly every standard postcard.
Accession VN-S02
Photo sleeves, 10×8 in, pack of 25
Clear uncoated polyester for enlargements, school prints and large negatives up to 10×8 in.
£15inc. VAT where due
Albums · why not sticky pages
Why sticky albums harm photographs
The self-adhesive, magnetic album sold in shops for decades has card pages coated with stripes of glue under a clear film. When new, prints lift off easily. Within a few years the glue hardens and yellows, the film shrinks and the acids in both migrate into the print. Many people find their parents' albums now hold photographs that tear when lifted.
If you have such an album, do not pull. Try sliding a length of fine nylon thread under one corner and sawing gently; if a print resists, leave it in place, slip a sheet of tissue over the page and store the whole album flat in a box. Removing difficult prints is skilled work, and a torn photograph cannot be put right at home.
Albums · the slip-in album
The slip-in album
Our album takes the opposite approach: no glue anywhere. Each of its forty pages is an archival card leaf faced with polyester pockets, two 6 × 4 inch pockets on each side, so every print sits in its own clear compartment and slides out again in twenty years exactly as it went in. There is a narrow strip under each pocket for a pencilled caption — who, where and roughly when, which is the information families most often wish someone had written down.
The binding is cloth over board, with a spine that opens flat. The album stands on a shelf or lies in a box, and for long storage we suggest it lies flat.
Accession VN-A01
Slip-in album, 40 pages
Cloth-covered board binding, 40 archival pages with polyester pockets taking two 6×4 in prints a side.
£32inc. VAT where due