Mount Size Suggestions

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Adyc
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Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Adyc »

I have this image of the Ironbridge which I am about to mount, I am looking for appropriate sizes, it is an A3 print. I have been looking at the following site:http://www.russellcottrell.com/photo/centering.htm. I just wondered if anybody has any advice or comments, I am happy cutting it, it is just the dimensions that I would like advice on.
Thanks in advance and Merry Christmas.
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prospero
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by prospero »

Big Question. :shock: There are myriad factors involved.

There are a 1000 ways and they are all 'right'.

The way I would do it is not the same as other members, but I'm sure they would all look great. :lol:


** I wouldn't put too much store in that with the magic maths formulas.
You see with your eyes/mind - not a calculator and a ruler.

Basically, if it looks OK, it is OK. :clap: :ninja:
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Rainbow
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Rainbow »

Blimey. Call me a philistine but all those mathematical equations do my 'ead in. I just go by what looks right, which is usually equal margins all round, usually with a tiny bit extra added on the bottom, depending on the size - not too much to make it noticeable but just enough to optically balance it. Personally I don't like narrower side margins on portraits, or narrower top/bottom on landscapes so I don't recommend them and my customers never ask for them. The main discussion point with customers tends to be how wide the mount should be. Mostly my customers want a fairly narrow mount, and only once has a customer wanted a mount that I thought was on the wide side. I think my customers and I suit each other - we're all fairly conservative, some might say boring :D
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prospero
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by prospero »

I've noticed people can be a bit blinkered about mounts. They are really only essential on watercolours/drawings. Often,
these items are stored unframed but mounted by large galleries or institutions. A bookmount allows them to be handled
and studied without damage.

Practical aspects aside (glass clearance) not all items 'need' a trad window mount. Personally a don't like them on needleworks for instance.
There are often other means of framing that work much better. A bit of 'out of the box' thinking is often a good thing. :yes:
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Adyc
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Adyc »

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated. I'll go with my instinct, interesting to hear what people make of the more scientific approach though.
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

Mathematical formulas..........I think not! What happened to artistic creativity? First of all, I don't think you can consider just the mount in isolation to everything else and than includes the frame. It's easy to mount and frame an image to make everything look lifeless and uninteresting, but making it live and breathe is what it is all about. When you get the chance to see pictures, mounts and frames together in really outstanding galleries and exhibitions, spend some time looking and I mean really looking.

What is it that makes each picture look really special? It won't be just one thing! We are talking about visual chemistry and the real magic happens inside the brain as you look at the complete thing. Take your time and ask yourself what the framer has done that makes it special. If it looks stunning, there's always something to learn. You won't learn it all at once. Go to nice places, where people with money and taste, buy things and learn to recognise the look and the feel. Nice things have something about them and it's something you can sense, get to know real class when you see it.

I can spend ages looking around auction houses, galleries, exhibitions and even car boots. I am not just looking at paintings, but also furniture and classy bits and pieces. Know your market, if the want to know what your discerning customers are going to be inspired by. You can't learn this stuff from books and you can't learn this from a distance, get right up close and know what nice things look like up close. Look at what real patina looks like, what things that have been finished to perfection look like.

Classy people surround themselves with classy items and the can spot items that don't quite make it instantly. I've got pretty good hearing and listen to what people are saying to each other as they are looking around these sort of places. Also different age groups tend to be looking for different things. Things which many people consider as unconnected are very often anything but. Learn about people who like nice things. Trust me, there's a lot to this and these people know how to create atmosphere with the things they buy for their own homes. Forget about numbers and formulas, that's not it.

Lean to look at things as people with great taste look at things and they don't get it out of books either, most of them grow up with it. Sooner, or later we start to grow up with it ourselves by using our eyes and seeing whats always been there to be seen, if we will take time to discern what we are looking at. Many things are all about the finishing touches, just as much about design. Some proportions and dimensions are about feel more than numbers and ratios, it's something that your brain gets tuned in to. I love looking at architecture too, I think it's all about expression and that mental connection as you take it in. You have to experience it to know what it is.
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prospero
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by prospero »

What him up there said. ^^^^ :clap:
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

Although I say that you can't really get this stuff from books, I have a book that is quite good when considering frame proportions. You see, I am into frames with architectural proportions. Having said that, not many customers are wanting frames with architectural proportions, it's only a few, but O just like stuff like that. I make the odd mirror once in a while, their not big sellers. It's sad, but mirrors are just a discount store commodity item these days and something people get from car boots and give them the shabby chic treatment.

In my previous shop a few doors up the road, I was next door to a fruit and veg shop, with huge sheets of mirror glass built into the shop fittings. When the owners retired and the shop became an accountants, the shop fittings got dumped and I was given the mirror glass and I've got plenty of it. When I first started mirrors were good sellers, but selling mirrors now is hard work and they need to be something quite different to get noticed. I make mirrors when I get the urge as stacked moulding designs, generally using pine mouldings and a lot about it is classic vintage proportions.

It would not matter much if I did not bother to make them, but I do. They look nice in a shop which is an old fashioned building. I picked up this book from a local charity shop, the book was called "The four books of architecture" by Andrea Palladio who built a lot of the classical architecture of Rome. I'm not saying go out and buy this book, but if you see an old copy somewhere, it's probably worth giving it a look to see what it's about.
Merry Christmas,
Mark
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

What are you thinking about when choosing a mount that look's special? What about the surface texture and appearance of the front face of the mount? As customers bring in older artworks to be re-framed and remounted, you may be presented with the opportunity to examine a really old mount and see some of the visual characteristics, which tell you how to produce a new mount in keeping with an artwork from the same era. It is generally true that mountboards with mechanically textured front surfaces are an option employed to hide an underlaying lack of smoothness, due less than optimal processing and materials and you can put a rough date on the introduction of mechanically textured mountboard. I'm not anyone who tell you this with absolute certainty, but I would say not later than 1960's and maybe a little earlier.

So, my thinking is that good quality smooth faced boards are more in keeping with artworks which are of an earlier date of origin and more recent mountboards of more basic quality are a little less smooth and a little bit more lumpy and bumpy. There is also a difference in how matte, or glossy the surface of the facing paper may be. Some older and smoother mounts have a slightly velvety look and feel to the surface, which reinforces the ability to discern that this is likely to be an older mount. This velvety type of surface does not create those almost inperceptable, slightly glossy little places where the mount and the glass have got slightly more contact in some place, more than elsewhere.

Another dead give away, often is the thickness of the mountboard, particularly one make of 1.4mm mountboard which is specified with a wider range of manufacturing tolerances, that allows them to sell !.3mm white core mountboard as 1.4mm nominal mountboard. Impressions count a lot and that small difference is more visibly obvious that you might assume, but trust me you don't have to look very hard to see it. It's there and people who are used to regularly looking at quality won't miss it. Arqadia produce a alpha cellulose solid core mountboard, with a range of numbers starting at 401 and going on to 406. They are 1.5mm thick, but are at a better price than going all the way for cotton core mountboards which are also !.5mm thick. These alpha cellulose boards are incredibly dense and cut with quite spectacular looking really crisp bevels, if your mountcutter is well adjusted.

If there a little give in the bearings of your mountcutter, don't be surprised if the dense board produces slight hooking when cutting the bevels. I also very slightly burnish back any very slight raised burr on the bevel caused when cutting the bevel. The assumption of many is that nobody is going to see this, but slight as it is with light at the right angle, you will see the shadow cast by this very slight burr. The more perfect your work gets, the more possible it will be to see how good you are and discerning customers will soon notice when the quality of your workmanship is really special, compared to other framers they have used before. A lot of older artworks, may look not quite right if the mountboard colour is too bright and therefore that little bit too pristine. Think about things like this when looking around up market galleries and exhibitions and see if you can see what I mean.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Steve N
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Steve N »

Just do what feels and looks right, 99% of the time I use equal borders on all 4 sides, if you use say 5mm, well quite honestly, you are not going to notice 5mm fromantic 10 feet away. As most pictures are hung at eye height, the bottom border looks right, so no need to make bigger
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by vintage frames »

Me - I don't cut mounts, so I'm not the best person to comment here. But, I fully endorse everything that has been said here, especially the two replies from Mark. Some of his best work to date. As everyone says, use your eye and even more important, educate your eye.
As I said, I have no great interest in mounts but fully appreciate the skill set in cutting a clean bevel and even the benefits of having a CMC where the finished results are crisp and faultless. However it's always useful to step back a bit from all this automation and see where the real value lies.
This was an example I had.
Some years ago a major Bond Street gallery had the good sense to have me make the frames for one of their selling exhibitions. I'm mentioning that just to put things in context. They arranged to have the art put into mounts by a separate company specializing in custom made mounts. The complete package was then crated to me for framing and assembly.
The presentation of each mounted drawing was absolutely beautiful and it was only when measuring up that I realized that not one of the mounts were centered exactly nor even fully squared. The error was not deliberate but a result of someone with taste and experience putting presentation ahead of any formula and measurement.
Something to think about if we aspire to be in the business of beauty and design.
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

A big thing for me tends to be proportions of the mount to the proportions of the frame moulding width. I've seen all sorts of suggestions how you are supposed to come up with the so called correct way of calculating this. Not only do none of these methods agree, but there does not seem to be anything remotely artist about them either. I've noticed certain things myself, but I'm not claiming to have any special knowledge, it's just a mixture of observation and a bit of thinking aloud and this is something that I suggest to my customers from time to time. I think that mounts are often just a way of adding blank space between the artwork and the frame. That blank space has a lot to do with dramatic presentation, which in turn has a lot to do with impact.

To some degree, increasing that blank space increases the impact, but the blank space around the outside of the frame also has a lot to do with impact as well. When there is limited space available around the outside of the frame and you increase the amount of blank space created by the mount too much, that space on the outside of the frame gets lost and much of the impact is lost too. None of this is taking into account artistic creativity, or quite simply what looks right. I think theories often produce little more than egg heads who think they have got it all worked out. On the other hand, there are the practical people who just know how to make things look right and if that's about anything, it's probably just good taste. Where did they get that good taste from? It's probably called experience.

Not so amazing after all.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

vintage frames wrote: Thu 26 Dec, 2019 10:18 amSomething to think about if we aspire to be in the business of beauty and design.
What it's all about in a nutshell.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
Not your average framer
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Re: Mount Size Suggestions

Post by Not your average framer »

It's not about being all that clever, but has more to do with picking up things as you do them. In my earlier days on the forum, I was not quite a newbie, because I had spent 6 months working at Triton Galleries in Torquay, which had been arranged by the Govenment's employment training service. I was being paid the Job Seekers Allowance by the Job Centre, but reporting for unpaid work at Triton Galleries. I had already acquired all the usual equipment before starting at Triton and had visited the Spring Fair at the N.E.C. I knew enough to get by, but that was about it. My wife and I generally struggled to get by and pay the bills and somewhere around this time we decide to rent a local shop and start trading as a picture framer, which really was asking for trouble.

After six months, I had a heart attack and things were going nowhere. At my wife's suggestion it was decided we needed a holiday, but we had no money. When my training with Job centre had finished some time earlier, I was told that there was £1,500 available for additional training, if I took it up within two years, so I arranged to spend the money having a week with Pete Bingham recieving training in Sheffield. I don't think my business would have got anywhere without my time with Pete. When I opened the shop, I quickly found out that I did not know as much as I hoped. Customers brought in jobs that I was not used to doing and what I did not know, I either made it up as I went along, or after joining the forum, asked on the forum.

An auction house had opened down the bottom of the town and customers started buying old frames and bringing them to me to have their own pictures fitted into the second hand frames. As you can imagine, the frames and the artworks were often difficult to make the fit look right and this required a bit of imagination to make things look right. Especially when the was no way you were going to be able to get equal mount borders. Obviously the side borders had to be equal, but the top and bottom borders had to be a compromise that needed to look intentional and well planned. It may sound crazy, but this teaches you to use your own eyesight and trust your own judgement.

It did not come all at once, it was not easy and I made plenty of mistakes along the way. If I was not forced into doing this work to pay the bills, I would have missed the chance to learn something, I probably would have learnt no other way. What's my point? Judgement often comes from experience and experience often involves taking risks and learning by your mistakes. Also proficiency, speed and confidence come from practice and lots of it. You can read as many books as you like, but you need to practice what the books tell you, just to find out if the writer of the book knew what he, or she was talking about. Very little worthwhile is learnt by just knowing the therory. The practice and the practical know how are also needed.
Mark Lacey

“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
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