Animation Art Conservation | CONSERVATION: LAMINATED CELS

Wide scale lamination of animation production cels is something both the Courvoisier Gallery Art Progam and the Walt Disney Art Program resorted to as a commercial means to keep cel paint adhered to the acetate. Lamination was also something the Walt Disney Art Program did to their line of hand painted limited edition cels. Cel paintings were frequently laminated on both sides of the art - although this was not consistent as both art programs also distributed art where lamination was done only to the back side of the cel paintings.

The products used by both wholesale distribution programs differ as well, but both programs did exclusively use the same commercial lamination technique and product during the period of time when they distributed the art. With time, both lamination processes suffered from lamination failure of one sort or another, but the lamination failure produced by cels laminated by the Courvoisier Gallery Art Program has little in common with the failure seen in the laminate used by the Walt Disney Art Program.

While both lamination products and processes had their shortcomings, that had a lot to do with inherant problems in the original materials. As in the case with the modern art program, there is the additional problem that the laminate chosen could not possibly adhere to the acetate cel sheets for any great length of time. Cels distributed from this art program often develop large canals of air pockets, which frequently intersect in the center of the cel sheet.

Partial restoration and conservation of these cels paintings are possible, but often time consuming. The above links will bring up pages that display some of my repair work to the laminated art distributed by both art programs.