Thoth water damage?!

[Aeon418]

In 2021 a new edition of Aleister Crowley's "Four Books of Magick" (edited by Stephen Skinner) was published. While the book itself looks lovely, I thought the text was marred a little by Stephen Skinner's rather self-important introduction and footnotes. However, while reading the introduction, I noticed a brief reference to the photography of Thoth Tarot paintings back in the 70's. 

 

Quote

The actual cards were donated to the Warburg, and in due course I was called upon to organise a complete set of colour photographs of the pack for a new Weiser edition published in 1977, which was the first quality colour Thoth pack published. I negotiated with the Warburg for permission to photograph, and hired Norbert Galea to do the photography. The job took the best part of a whole day. The Warburg told me in no uncertain terms that this was the first, and definitely the last, time this would be allowed, “so their photography and later publication had better be good.” 

 

The footnote to this passage caught my eye.

 

Quote

I have heard that the cards were subsequently photographed once more, much later. Sadly, despite being kept in Solander boxes, the cards, which were quite large (being close to 2 feet (0.6m) by 3 feet (0.9m) in size), later suffered water damage.

 

I haven't heard anything about the original paintings suffering water damage. Has anyone else heard anything?

[Rori]

I know they had to be restored once (I'm no artist, so I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, but I think the glue they used to affix the paintings to the borders was too acidic and was breaking down the paper) - according to Wikipedia, this was completed in 2011.

 

According to the restoration proposal there was no water damage then - but of course I don't know when Skinner wrote that footnote!

Or maybe he was told about the acidity damage and something got mixed up?