RESTORING A BILLBOARD POSTER

1961 Gone With The Wind Billboard Restoration

This incredible billboard poster dates from the 1961 theatrical re-release of of the 1939 film Gone With The Wind. These large format posters are extremely rare for obvious reasons - few were made and fewer were saved as this size is difficult to collect and display. Made up of 24 separately printed sheets, this poster arrived in 13 sections that had to be painstakingly cleaned, reassembled, and restored. This work was performed by Poster Conservation Inc in Greenwich, CT.

The work began with a surface cleaning of both sides of each piece, followed by bleaching of the paper - this has to be done all at one time with the same batch of solution to ensure all of the pieces come out evenly with no tint variation among the white areas. Once dry, the poster was mounted to a linen canvas backing using a special neutral rice glue. Over many weeks, the missing sections were replaced using scraps of paper from posters of the same era, which helps to match the paper stock and printing style. These patches are hand-colored using colored pencils to blend seamlessly with the original image. Missing text is replaced by hand-painting over replaced paper, old tape and marks are removed and covered, fold and join lines are smoothed over and made invisible. The entire process uses gentle archival materials so that all of the restoration work can be safely reversed as desired, leaving the poster in its found state. Finally the poster is cut from the frame on its linen backing and rolled for storage.

With this restoration, this large-format poster is ready to live on for another 50 - 100 years.