Trade supply · Frisco, Texas
Bone folders, buckram off the roll, Davey board, linen thread, wheat starch and archival board — held in stock and dispatched the next business day. We sell to binders, conservators, libraries and records offices, and we sell nothing we could not specify to you over the phone.
Nine departments. Every line is stocked, not drop-shipped — if it is listed, it is on the shelf in Frisco and it goes out on the next van.
Every line is photographed here, on the bench, under the same light — because a material you cannot see the surface of is a material you cannot specify.
The single specification most often got wrong in collection care, and the reason we stock both and mark them apart on the shelf.
Buffered board carries an alkaline reserve — usually calcium carbonate — which neutralises acids migrating out of the object and out of the air around it. For paper, that reserve is protective, and it is why a mount cut from buffered museum board does not print a brown line onto a print in thirty years the way a woodpulp mount reliably does.
For protein-based material it is the wrong answer. Wool, silk, leather, parchment, feather and most photographic processes with a gelatin binder are harmed by an alkaline environment. Housing them in buffered stock is one of the most common and most quietly destructive specification errors there is, because nothing appears to go wrong for years.
So we stock both, and because the two are indistinguishable on a shelf, every unbuffered sheet we sell is edge-marked UNBUFFERED along one long edge and wrapped in a contrasting colour. If you hold both in one store, keep the wrapping on.
| Material | Specify |
|---|---|
| Paper records, prints, documents, books | Buffered |
| Wool, silk, textiles | Unbuffered |
| Leather, parchment, feather | Unbuffered |
| Gelatin-binder photographs, most historic processes | Unbuffered |
| Mixed or unknown collections | Unbuffered — it is safe against everything |
Boring, and deliberately so. A supplier is judged on whether the right thing arrives flat and on time.
| Item | How it travels |
|---|---|
| Board and paper | Flat, interleaved, corner-protected. Never rolled unless you ask. |
| Cloth and leather | Rolled on a core, never folded — a fold in a covering material is permanent. |
| Presses, shears, frames | Palletised or double-boxed. Floor models are kerbside delivery. |
| Adhesives | Water-based only, so no hazardous-goods surcharge and no ground-only restriction. |
| Tools and consumables | Boxed, dispatched next business day on in-stock lines. |
Orders are picked in Frisco, Texas. In-stock lines placed before 2pm Central go out the same afternoon; everything else goes the next business day. Made-to-size clamshell boxes are the one exception and carry a stated ten-working-day lead time, which we tell you before you order rather than after.