Renewing an Old Design

Looks like its going to be a wet week for us at the beginning of the New Year. Going outside is no fun, especially when it comes to dragging your valuable art out to the frame shop. While you’re all hunkered down for the bad weather, take a look around your home. Chances are you’ve had the same things up on the walls for a while now (I know I do, and I have easy access to all kinds of wall décor.) This week, I’m going to show you how to dress up your existing wall hanging material and give new life to the things you’ve chosen to decorate your home with. Maybe you bought that shiny gold metal frame back in the eighties and it’s a tad out of style. Maybe your pictures are looking just a little too gunky no matter how much you’ve tried to clean them. Bring this stuff to me, I’m an expert at picture renewal.

The other day, a gentleman brought in just such a piece. Here we have an old, thin wood framed piece, with a yellowing paper mat and some dust or mold creeping in under the glass. I see a lot of this in older framed pieces. Professional picture framing techniques are a relatively new thing, and you see all sorts of materials that we would now consider inappropriate in common use in older picture frames. Take a look around your home, I’m sure you have something like this.

Our customer likes the overall look, it's worked well for him so far. He just needs this piece pulled apart and cleaned out, and perhaps a new look to the boring old single mat. Fortunately, we can reuse a lot of the materials in the original frame and improve the picture without shelling out the cost of a whole new job from scratch.

When I get a job like this, the first thing I do is pull it apart and clean it out. Outside of a couple scuffs, the frame is in good shape and the customer would like to reuse it in the new design. Some cleaner on both the inside and outside of the glass goes a long way towards clearing up the cloudy look that was given by the grime of age. The first thing I notice after getting the piece apart is that the art itself had been pre-mounted on a thicker acidic board and essentially taped in place with masking tape. The customer is long gone by the time I notice this, and I make a decision to give this piece a proper mounting when I put it back together.

Countermatting is the appropriate way to mount art on thicker substrate, be it a photo mounted on a thick board, or sometimes whole magazines or comic books can be mounted in this way. To do a countermat, I first use some acid free foamcore to use as a backing. I then center the art on the board, and cut some strips of archival mat that will be attached to the backing. I fix the strips in place so that they fit snugly around the art. When I place the finished matting on top of the piece, the art is sandwiched between backing and mat, with the archival board strips around the edges to keep the art centered. No adhesive actually touches the art, there is no chance of the art slipping around inside the frame, and everything will fit flush inside the frame with no awkward bowing of the mat.

The matting was chosen with the customer during the design process when the piece was first brought in. Many factors can go into consideration when choosing a design for your piece. Maybe you want to match the new look of a re-done room. Maybe you want to give the frame a fresh, new look that’s more up to date. In this case, taking apart an old frame, cleaning it out, and re-fitting the piece with some new, acid-free mats has rejuvenated this piece of art. There was a lot of detail in the image that was lost behind musty glass and acid stained matting, now this old piece has been made brand-new while staying within the budget of the customer.

That’s this week’s fun with framing. I hope you’ve been inspired to take a look around you home at what you have on the walls. Maybe you have something that needs a little refreshing, and updated look, or simply some proper cleaning. Such a project is perfect for trying out a new frame shop: Without spending a lot of money, you can get to know the quality and service of a shop before you come back with more complex pieces. While I’m thinking about it, I have a coupon that can help you do just this. I’m offering $25 off your entire custom framing order for one week this month when you print it out and bring it in.