What printer/inks/paper would you suggest for archival printing. That's always been my concern about selling inkjet prints - that they'd fade in a relatively short time. I have an Epson 1290 at present.
I have a friend who sells prints from his 1290 in galleries - so far he has not gotten burned.
Personally, I use an Epson 2000P for prints I sell in area stores and art fairs. I've had it for almost 2.5 years, and the first prints I did with it still look great. Epson claims something like 180 years before noticeable fading with the matte paper, 150 years with the semi-gloss.
However, it can be difficult to work with (limited gamut, very few paper choices) and has problems with metamerism (color hues shift depending on the color temp of the light it's observed under.) The latter is not a big problem for me due to the content of my work. If a flower, butterfly, or scenic shifts a little to the yellow or green under different light, it's barely noticeable. But I'd have second thoughts about using it for photos of people - little shifts to the green in baby portraits are _much_ more noticeable.
The 2000p also can't do B&W well (and in fairness to Epson, they flat out say it is not intended for B&W.) I get good results setting it to print in imitation Sepia Tone via a setting buried inside the driver, but regular B&W comes out looking bluish green.
The Epson 2200 with the Ultrachrome inks tackles a lot of these problems - better gamut, compatible with many different papers, less metamerism, vastly improved B&W, separate ink cartridges for each color, butonly a claimed 75 year archival life. If I were in the market for an inkjet today, I'd get that, but for now I don't see a need to change over from the 2000P.
One thing about virtually any inkjet - once framed the inside of the glass will inevitably become fogged due to out-gassing from the inks. It's not terribly noticeable, but I usually open up the frames and clean the inside of the glass before each venue. Once you pull the glass out and hold it up to the light, you can really see the fogging.
I have matted pieces inside clear cello bags - some are getting a little old too - but they seem to hold up without any fading and the bags don't seem to get foggy (though even the clearest plastic bag is foggy compared to glass.)
HTH-
MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
http://www.markcassino.com
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