Agfa Brovira- 1950's Photo Paper Printing

Last week on eBay I bought a packet of 1950's Agfa Bovira Bromide photographic paper. I bought it on a whim for cheap enough. The package having been opened and the paper being quite old I did not know what to expect. When it arrived  I opened it the darkroom and and found it was stored properly in its double envelope. There were perhaps 10 sheets of 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 paper along with a number of strips cut presumably to make test strips.  

The back of the paper has this watermark.

Watermark on back. It is actually quite faint and this was enhanced to see it better. 

The first thing I did was take one strip out and develop and fix it to determine if the lot had been exposed to light and ruined. It developed not quite white but to a light pinkish tinge. This told me the paper was OK but perhaps fogged. It was processed as follows.

2 minute Ilford Universal PQ (1+9)
20 seconds stop
1 minute Ilford Rapid Fix (1+9)
2 minute wash

Unexposed Paper Developed as above (note pink tinge)

Next I exposed a test strip using a 35mm negative from my brother's collection. The paper is #5 grade (high or hard contrast) so I was sure what to expect.

I set the enlarger up to print to the size of paper in my printing easel, set focus and set the aperture at f11. I then ran my standard 1 stop sequence (4,8,16,32 seconds) and developed it as above for the following result...

      4                                                 8                                         16                                                    32                   64
First Test Strip f11 4-64 seconds marked in black.

Once again the pink hue in the white areas. Also apparent is the need to open up the aperture a couple of stops to get the exposure in a reasonable range. So the next test strip was set up the same way however this time at f5.6.

  

  4                                      8                                      16                                         32                                 64
Second Test Strip at f5.6 4-64 seconds marked in black. 

Here I would say that 16 seconds was best. Noting the consistent pink hue I thought this was likely not enough fixing time (the pink emerged after the wash). The test strips were fixed for 1 minute which is fine for RC paper but this is FB paper so I decided I would opt for much longer fix time of 5 minutes and a longer wash. Here is the result...

Final Print (selenium archival toned (1+19) for 4 minutes)

2 minute Ilford Universal PQ (1+9)
20 seconds stop
5 minute Ilford Rapid Fix (1+9)
30 minute wash

I was very pleased that such old paper could give such nice results. The range of tones to my eye looks good despite the subject and the hardness of the paper. There is much less pink color confirming my suspicion about insufficient fixing. (The print in hand seems to have none, certainly less than shown here.) Being FB paper the photo is curled and is also a very thin light-weight paper compared to most modern FB papers. This combines with the blackness (neutral) of tones to make one feel this is a much older photo than it is.