Muted mountboard

[Jamesnkr]

Elsewhere, VF wrote this:

Does anyone remember Wyatt and Ackerman; they did a wonderfully toned down and plain selection of mountboards which were perfect for the period.

What do people use when they want something nice and toned down for antique watercolours. There's nothing in the Arquadia mountboard range. Something the colour of sun-bleached straw lying in fields at the end of October, and with a bit of texture. An old parchment.

Hayseed is too brilliant a white for what I have in mind. Cream and ivory tones are the colour of bright yellow and almost inevitably come with a smooth surface. I can't be the only one needing this?

I guess I'm going to be told to practise my wash lines. A fair point.

[prospero]

With you there James. There are a few mountboards with a nice antique look, but the big problem is the shining white bevels. I use an Aqadia board (Lemon) for lots of olde stuff. It is a nice muted Ivory with grey flecks. Since Aq discontinued their standard core range this board now has a pristine white bevel. Which looks totally incongruous on old paper items that have darkened.

One good one is Daler 'Sand' which has an Ingres paper facing. You can still get this with a cream core. The paper is quite a dark ivory which tones in nicely with antiquarian stuff. Not quite as versatile as the Aq lemon, but worth a look.

The only other alternatives are tinting the bevel, which is a lot of extra work and not easy to do. Or, use a solid core rag board. These give you a very restricted choice and a very expensive to boot.

[Roboframer]

Untrue!

Cream core board, the type that goes brown, should be illegal! Some manufacturers agree, fortunately.

Cotton board may be expensive but won't put a big % on a decent frame job and one supplier at least does a good range of colours in it - Nielsen, and it is also artcare quality. They also do a range of non-cotton conservation boards with a cream core but they are also in their artcare range and are made for this exact problem and then, as mentioned, you can colour the bevel, which, if you mask it by cutting through the tape, is not difficult at all.

[Graysalchemy]

I would have said a musuem rag board would fit the bill. By the way hayseed conservation is the same core colour as the face no bright white. Nothing worse than bright white cores IMHO.

[markw]

For me Daler cream caramel / Sand/light parchment are all good. I do a lot of remounting for antique stuff - "we like the orange bevel" so Scotch removable tape applied before cutting - cut through to give a very precise edge and then a quick coat of paint on the bevel. the tape needs a little burnish to make sure its doing its job and doesn't allow the paint to seep underneath.

[Jamesnkr]

Cream core board, the type that goes brown, should be illegal! Some manufacturers agree, fortunately.

A shame it wasn't made illegal 100 years ago...

Cotton board may be expensive but won't put a big % on a decent frame job

All very well for you as you can make an extra profit on it. However it can put a huge % extra cost on many of my framing jobs. Remember, I give my frames away so it's one thing to bury a load of hours in a frame, much worse to bury a load of cash. If I'm unlucky I can't give my frames away so it's sunk cash sitting in a pile propped up against a wall. Like this:

Mark, which is the tape code again, keep meaning to buy some. What do you use, watered down watercolour?

[markw]

Scotch Removable lion code 1470 3M 811. I tend to use watered down Acrylic - watercolour is too transparent.

[prospero]

It should be noted that the standard core board you buy today is nowhere near as nasty as it used to be back in the '70s. The bevels don't go orange.

As for the extra cost of ragboard, most folks would not be prepared to pay the extra. Or the extra for tinting the bevel for that matter.....

I've been though boards in all ranges and there is nothing in the rag core ranges that is anywhere near what I want.

[Roboframer]

"Most folks"?

Maybe it depends on their perception based on the type of premises, I don't know; I do know that is not true here.

[prospero]

It is here. But that is academic if there isn't a more expensive board that fits the bill anyway.

Why use a board that is not quite right and charge extra for the privilege?

[Roboframer]

I just opened a recent job and changed the board to alpharag artcare, the glass size is 740x570 and it increased the price by six quid.

[prospero]

I've just had a look at the Artcare stuff online and I think there is some stuff in the solid colour range that looks quite promising. I must see if I can get a colour chart.

So Brownie Points for Robo. What's it like for washlining?

I'm a bit out of touch with the Bainbridge stuff. I used to use a lot of it back in the day. None of my regular suppliers seem to do it, so I sort-of drifted away from it.

[Roboframer]

Artcare boards have been very inconsistent for washlines - best get a set of corners and see - if it's textured forget it, if it's smooth it was supposed to be made to take water. The cotton stuff is fine .... at present!

The colour charts are printed, not actual surface papers - unless they have a new one out with surface papers due to all the complaints about printed charts being pants!

[Not your average framer]

I may be on the wrong track about this, but are you thinking about the tint 10 range originally produced by the now defunct Lawerence and Aitken. Well, it you are some of the colours in the original tint 10 range have been reintroduced as part of the Daler range of mountboards and they still use the same tint numbers.

BTW, I quite often use harvest beige mountboard from the Colourmount range for mounting antique prints as it is a nice muted colour and often looks just right for some antique prints. Also the core material is not quite as bright as the Arqadia boards, so you don't get the same really bright looking mount bevels.

[Jayvee]

Colourmount Harvest Beige used to be my 'go to board' nice and neutral - however in the past few months the quality seems to have taken a dip...lots of little black bits just under the surface paper here and there ... Must have gone through over 100 boards (if not 200) with the issue from different suppliers over the past few months. Sometimes you can cut around them, sometimes you can't!

[prospero]

I've seen some things mounted with Lawrence and Aitken boards in the '70s/early '80s. It's really nasty stuff. Not only brown bevels but the face papers discoloured from the toxic oozings of the core.

[Not your average framer]

That's true, but also they made better quality boards as well as the cheaper stuff, although in those days a lot more framers where still using neutral pH mountboards. We are of course talking about muted mountboard colours, so I thought that this might be worth a mention.

Examples that have survived from this earlier era, using pH neutral boards would also be looking fairly naff by now, because the era of Lawence & Aitken was so long ago, I'm not sure how long ago Lawence & Aitken disappeared, but most of the framers now framing probably started framing after the Lawence & Aitken era. Of course the colours that they used then reflected those that were popular during that era and are therefore more in keeping with older subject matter.

Changing the subject slightly while remaining on the same subject, is it worth mentioning that different mountboard manufacturers had different degrees of whiteness for their mountboard core materials. So, I'm assuming that if we are looking for muted mountboard colours, then would it also be desirable for these mountboards to have less bright white bevels.

For modern items requiring framing Arqadia and Daler mountboards have a good range of brighter looking mountboard colours and also bright white cores, resulting in nice bright bevels. For older items which look more in keeping with more subdued mountboard colours then the Colourmount range has a good range of muted colours with less bright core colours. BTW, I don'personally use the tint 10 range myself, but I do use various colouers from the Colourmount range instead.

Can we have a little more guidance from the original poster regarding the uses for this muted mountboard, so that the forum members can address this question more exactly please.

[vintage frames]

The original poster was me and I got the names hopelessly wrong. Laurence and Aitken was indeed the company, now defunct. I mentioned them because they supplied the "tone" of the era.
Ive framed several 40's and 50's artists and always felt a missmatch with the colour of the mounts available and the colours of the art. When the art was available in it's original frame and mount, then everything looked in complete harmony.
It was challenging enough to reproduce the early frames, but I always came a croper with the mount. This is all leaving aside the question of museum standards, as this was always taken as a given.
I try not to use any mounts at all but will come to this forum for any advice on future choice.

[Not your average framer]

however in the past few months the quality seems to have taken a dip...lots of little black bits just under the surface paper here and there ...

Unfortunately I think that this has a lot to do with the state of the economy and the fact that price competition is such a big factor in today's market.

Like it, or not, many of the bigger players in this market have a lot of buying power and will switch suppliers for relatively small levels of price and they are less bothered about quality issues than we are, so the mountboard suppliers have to do likewise and make their mountboard with the most cost effective materials.

The problem is because a lot of the smaller framers are buying less than they did before the recession, (as are the bigger players too!), but the mountboard manufacturer's still have to pay their overheads from a smaller turnover. This will probably not change any time soon. I also note that there is a pecking order between different suppliers as regards quality and price.

As always, you do tend to get what you pay for, if you want certain colours and bevels which are less bright, sometimes life starts to get difficult. I would like to find an easy way around this problem.

I don't think that there is an easy solution to this, apart from painting both mountboard and bevel. Some of us are willing to do this when push comes to shuve, but do we have the time and will the customer pay enough to make it worthwhile?