Mounts, matts, passepartouts, whatever you call them, are an integral part of frames for works on paper. From old master drawings, watercolours, pastels to degree certificates, postcards or pictures brought home from school, they will need a mount probably 19/20 times.
The arty bit comes into play in the choice of board colour, width and thickness. The common approach is to pick a colour from the picture but I always look for the complimentary colours. The choice of colour in the picture to work from is the tricky bit. There may be complimentary colours in the picture, tucked away in the background. Do you go for those? Not necessarily. Balance is the objective, a balance that you are happy with and which will vary in effect from image to image.
The mount round this John Nash watercolour is a pale green, roughly the colour of the highlights on the hill. Given that there is already plenty of green in the image how is this balanced? There are three prominent colours, blue red and purple, and the pale brown of the track. The remainder is almost all green but it is the turmoil of the green which is important, not the green itself.
The mount colour takes some of the glare out of the green and leaves the movement highlighted. The blue, red and purple need no help and the pale brown runs into the mountboard to which the picture is attached.
This technique of physical mounting is called “float mounting”. The whole sheet is shown and this can be for a wide range of reasons. Here the watercolour goes right to the edge and very commonly, the signature is very close to the edge. Etchings are often trimmed close to the “plate mark” and there no margin to clip a mount over, again, no option.
Sometimes, however, it can look very well to float an image which does have space around it. There are no rules, just an extra cost. Well there is another piece of mountboard required. This technique is very effective with certificates, letters and other pieces that have a value beyond what is on the paper. It turns the piece into an object.
Here I have used a narrow margin and a bright red to lift the sheet of music.
The choice of this method can produce all sorts of effects, add some zip, be subtle and use a board very close to the colour of the paper or for a classy look, use museum board for the mount and the float.
Or you can do without a mount at all. There is a small fillet inside the glass to keep the paper clear.
The “overmount” method is the most common and because of its simplicity, offers more opportunities for tweaking. The float technique produces three lines round the sheet, the edge of the sheet itself and the top and bottom of the mount which makes any decoration on the mount a touch of overkill.
The use of washlines or just ink lines went out of fashion some time ago and quite rightly given the appalling lack of understanding of their purpose.
This mount is possibly the worst I have ever come across -three gold pen lines and two washes. The unfortunate watercolour now resides in something more rational.
However things are moving on and washline mounts are making something of a comeback. They can vary from the very simple, To the full monty, but care is needed for that.
This gets away with breaching the guideline of floating and lines by not looking like a line. The radial effect moves the eye towards the head and specifically, the eyes.
In the manner of an awards ceremony – None of this would be possible without ——- Mountboard!
Mountboard worth using is not cheap, so an explanation of what and why seems only fair.
Only museum board has the colour throughout. “Solidcore” conservation boards also have this property but only in black or shades of white. Museum board is made from cotton rag and is inherently acid-free.
Conservation board is made from almost totally lignin-free wood pulp. Lignin is the part of wood that causes the problems of browning and acidity, the residual lignin is buffered with calcium carbonate, CaCO₃ (which gives a pH of 8 – 8.5, for the chemists present).
There is also a Standard grade mountboard which I do not stock. This is made from cleansed and bleached wood pulp.
These do not brown like older mounts but despite the use of CaCO₃, do not give long term protection to artworks. To quote one of the top manufacturers “this is not necessary since the boards are not used for framing valuable objects.”
Mounts are an important part of the frame and determine how you look at a picture and what you see.
For a deeper look into the functions of mount decoration click below for an article I wrote for the Fine Arts Trade Guild magazine on just this.