The Framers Forum

Any suggestions on mounting a painting on papyrus to mountboard.?

The client wishes to see the papyrus painting against a dark mountboard in a black frame.

I am at a loss at the moment as how to fix the papyrus to the mountboard so that it looks neat and conforms to conservation standards.

I doubt if the client will ever want to remove the art from the mountboard, but then one never knows!!

Any ideas will be appreciated.

Regards

George.

Hi George,

Welcome to the forum.

Sorry I can't help you as I have never framed a papyrus to conservation standards, but I'm sure that there will be others who can help.

Just a hint about your avatar though. You must first make it accessable to the intenet before it can be displayed on the forum. For example you could upload it to a location on your own website and then use its URL in the "Link to off-site Avatar" box in your profile. If you do not have access to any webspace, let me know and I can arrange to put it up on the forum for you.

Hi,

Some framers stick this down, or dry mount it, but for me the best way is as follows:

1. I use a piece of moutboard (conservation quality) to use as an undermount and to attach the papryus to..using hinges hidden behind
2. I like the idea of seeing the entire object, rough edges and all, so I would use a mount border that is narrrower than the object, and I always suggest a double mount, this helps create a larger gap between the front of the papryus and the inside of the glass (personal choice here)

Hope this helps? Its an easy job really.

Steven

Hi George
Welcome to the Forum
We do quite a lot of these things and use the procedure described by Steven above.
The whole object is the image character itself, so the edges really must be seen.
To stick it down we use conservation tissue hinge tape. A strip of about 40mm long folded over to make a triangle shape. Sticky side outwards and then placed onto the top corners and depending on width of papyrus one in the top middle.
Works very well and looks real good.

I just had some of these to do for a retailer to sell on. Obviously the 20 for a tenner job lots from ebay, though. the brief was "do something special but cheap" (which means quick).
resisting the hot melt glue, and the atg gun, we made up wee "boxes" out of 6x12mm PAR about 1/2" smaller all rount than the papyrus, (you could use foamcore I guess) and attached it to the back of the papyrus using the tape as mentioned above by john, then PVA glued the PAR box onto a black mountboard.
strictly speaking i suppose planed all round wood isn't very "conservation" but in this case it was just on a mass produced papyrus for a trade job. the a simple job to make up a frame with a 15mm slip, cutting the slip and frame at the same time in the morso, and the thing looks like its floating in space.
instant attention grabber - specially with the interesting edges.
The shop we made them for is over the moon, instead of getting £25 framed for them, as previously, he's getting £50.

we've done these in the past with a cold cathode light in them- an absolutely stunning effect, but departing a bit far from conservation Just make the spacer 30mm, use a mount to hide the light behind but leave plenty of room to see the edges of the papyrus, and the cold cathode tube gets zip-tied through holes in the backing board. You can add this lot for about a fiver, and another ten minutes work. I hasten to add, I wouldn't advocate this sort of thing for anything valuable, but its a bit of nice light relief (geddit) and can bring some fun back into your day.

If the customers see one, they want one. But its a difficult thing to sell without a demonstrator.

You have to supply it with a separate mains adaptor for the low voltage to comply with electrical regulations, of course.

im just off to ebay right now to get some more cold cathode lights for something similar to jazz up our window display.

Hi all,

Thanks for all the feedback and ideas, this has certainly helped me.

Regards
George.