The Framers Forum

A customer brought in a document written on vellum in 1657. Any ideas on the best method to float mount it?

Hi Juliet,

Welcome to the forum.

I've never had to float vellum, so can't offer any advice from experience. I would imagine that there might be some concern about a suitable adhesive, anything wet would tend to pucker the vellum, but, on the other hand, there are conservation issues with self-adhesive.

Hope someone here can help you.

Juliet

Unless anyone on this forum is used to dealing with real vellum with genuine and widespread experience; the first port of call for advice would be the Heraldic Society, Guildford, Surrey.

Calfskin vellum has to be treated with kid-gloves (literally).

Cardinal rule: no heat to flatten, e.g. hot-press.

I would suggest a very fine needle and thread and I mean fine; tack gently near top two corners, somewhere hidden, but get advice from above first.

I have not needed to mount anything in vellum, but I have framed serveral vellum items for one of my customers. These were bought by him already mounted by the dealer who supplied them, so I was able to see how it was done. No doubt there are other ways of doing it too.

These vellum documents were supplied in a sort of box mount to fit directly into the back of a frame. There was a window mount at the front, glued behind this was a simple wooden frame for spacing, followed by a piece of mountboard onto which the vellum was loosely located by means of either red or blue ribbons across the corners of the vellum through slots cut into the mountboard. The back was covered with a piece of hardboard, which was secured with panel pins into the simple wood frame. The ribbons were suprisingly loose, I assume this was intentional.

During earlier employment as a bookbinder I have read about working with vellum, but was most thankful that I was never asked to. Vellum can be both hard and brittle to work with, flattening is not for the faint-hearted, especially if there is any risk of the ink or decoration on the vellum becoming detached. If it needs flattening, I would suggest it's a job for an expert.

I hope this helps.

Clickety

Clickety

Clickety (best link for you I think)

Clickety Click

Pay major attention to the words of 'Rebecca' and 'Preservator' (Hugh Phibbs) in those links.

Photo corners could also be an option, how big is it?

Juliet Rees wrote:A customer brought in a document written on vellum in 1657.

350 years and now you ask us!

(Sorry)

Thanks for your advice. I did more research and managed to find a paper conservator who also works with vellum (lots of them don't).

I am going to go the route of using ribbon across the corners. Apparently polyester won't affect the vellum. The other advice was to leave lots of room for expansion and contraction of the document.

I have done a few vellum items - you normally want to see the whole item so the ribbon method is effective and looks good. Another non invasive method is to create an undermount cut so that the vellum just sits comfortably inside it - then an overlapping mount thats smaller than the first mount - trapping the document yet not fastening it - this allows for expansion and with vellum the inevitable curl that always seems to be present.

I'm always in favour of showing the edges of anything like vellum, deckle edges on paper, or the indented edges on indentures, etc. This not only adds some extra interest to the item, but in many cases it shows at a glance the age of, or genuineness of the item. Any shadow cast behind the items only adds to the effect, especially if the item is not flat.

I’ve come to this discussion a little late to help Juliet for her current situation, but, maybe, for the future this might help:

As you know vellum and sheepskin are extraordinarily hygroscopic materials. Any attempt at plunking it in a heat press will distort a rectangular sheet of the stuff to a shape that defies any geometrical description and make it almost impossible to mat and mount.

The few pieces that we see have often been stored in a drawer and over the years has become so brittle that we are terrified of breaking it. For these cases we have constructed a “humidity chamber” made from an inexpensive, plastic, wall paper trough. Ours is about 39” x 4” x 8”. They can be obtained at most paint or (surprisingly enough) wall paper stores.

Into the bottom of the trough, we pour about an inch of water then float two or three empty and dry, plastic (not metal) ice cube trays. On top of the dry trays, we then place our rolled up animal skin diploma. Cover the top of the wall paper trough and seal it with shrink wrap plastic. After a few days, the animal skin will absorb enough moisture to relax and become supple enough to work with.

We used to cover the trough with a sheet of glass, but we broke a few and discovered that as the vellum relaxed and uncurled, it would contact the top of the glass which sometimes had drops of water condensate on it. That should be avoided.

Once the piece is soft and pliable, then place it between two photo quality blotters under weight until it dries. Again, you absotively, positutely cannot dry it under heat!

This method of “relaxing” sheepskin, etc. also works well for those paper posters that have been rolled up and stored in someone’s dry attic for decades. In this case, once the rolled poster has stopped pretending that it is a window shade, you can dry mount it without having to sandwich it between blotters.

Luckily this indenture was folded quite carefully and after a couple of weeks in my telephone directory press (state of the art equipment), it looks good.

I realise that it will probably revert somewhat to it's previous state so will take that into account when mounting and framing it.