Portland Poster Restoration With Affiche Studio

Here at Porchlight, poster design plays a huge role in everything we do. Posters from the 1950s and 60s have influenced so much of our own designs and how we advertise, not to mention the fact that they make up most of our Vintage section. One of the ways these pieces of advertising have made it through the years, and will continue to do so, is through preservation and restoration—and Jason Leonard of Affiche Studio does just that. We reached out to Jason to document and share what exactly goes into restoring and preserving posters. 

One of the best ways to ensure that posters remain physically stable through the years is to mount them on a thin artist's canvas. The process is commonly referred to as Linen-Backing. Once the piece is linen-backed, folds, creases, tears and other losses can be repaired. It not only conserves the poster, but ultimately adds value.

In the photos below, you'll see parts of the process in which Jason hand-paints sections of damaged posters, uses salvaged pieces of posters to match that of which he's working on, and you'll also see the enormous size of some of the posters that he restores at Affiche. We even brought him an early 1960s Hawaii Pan Am poster which he will be restoring in the future.