Care log
A yearly check you can tick off, a record of what each check found, and the rotation dates for anything light sensitive. Three sheets that take a few minutes a year.
Optional on a first pass, and the cheapest thing in the manual to start. Nothing here is needed to frame or hang a picture. What it buys is the ability to notice a change: a record that says "checked, nothing" three years running is what makes the fourth year's finding mean something. A reader who skips it will not know whether a frame has always looked like that.
The yearly check
Work through it once a year, with a date beside each line. It is a look, not a treatment: nothing here asks you to clean, open or repair anything.
What the checks found
One row per thing you noticed, whether or not you did anything about it. Write what you saw, not what you think it means.
Rotation
One row per light-sensitive piece on display. The yearly exposure comes from the light and exposure calculator; the date to come down is a plan, not a deadline from anyone.
How to use this sheet
- Work the checklist once a year, with a date beside each line. It is a look, not a treatment: nothing on it asks you to clean, open or repair anything.
- Write what you found, including nothing. An empty findings sheet and a findings sheet full of "nothing seen" are different records, and only the second one is evidence.
- Describe, do not diagnose. "Faint brown speckling in the lower left" is a record. "Foxing" is a conclusion, and it belongs to whoever looked at it with a loupe.
- The rotation sheet is only for light-sensitive pieces. If none of yours are, write that in a row rather than leaving the sheet blank.
- Put the date in a calendar, not in your head. This is the one sheet whose value is entirely in being used again.
The rotation sheet is seeded with one empty row when your setup says you have light-sensitive media, as a prompt rather than as an example. The Okonkwos' first yearly check, invented, is described in Keeping it: four findings in twenty minutes, of which three were hardware and one was a haze of scratches on acrylic from the wrong cloth. That is a realistic result for a first check, and none of it was about the pictures.
This is a record of looking, not an assessment. It cannot tell you whether a mark is mold, foxing, a stain or a shadow, and it cannot tell you whether something has faded, because fading is slow enough that only photographs taken years apart show it. A conservator settles condition. The rotation dates are plans you made from published figures and your own measurements, not deadlines anyone issued.