
Mounts
Mountboard and Mounting
A mount has many functions as well as aesthetics, allowing you to crop an image or highlight a border, focusing on what you want to see and can be used to enhance the colours in a piece. Mounts are also useful for adding size or positioning to a piece. We use a non bleed white core mount as standard which is pH neutral to Fine Art Trade Guild Mountboard Standard: Level 3.
Mounts are available in a wide selection of colours and finishes, including textured finishes, metallics and linen. We also offer extra thick mounts, jumbo oversized, black core and mount slips, and all our mounts are cut to size in our workshop.
Personally I think a window mount is the best way to protect your work, it encases the piece in a protective stable environment and acts as a spacer to keep glass off the artwork surface. We hinge-mount artwork allowing for the natural expansion and contraction of paper materials. It’s a very useful tool in conservation framing too - using an archival backing, works can be mounted in conservation corners so that nothing is attached to the artwork itself. Mountboard is available in a range of archival finishes up to certified museum grade standard.
We can also produce multi-aperture mounts, allowing many works to be displayed in one frame. This technique can also be used to create a keyhole title aperture in the mount.
Further techniques include circular mounts and layered mounts, double mounts being a standard, allowing for a step or two tone option - a great way to introduce a subtle colour to a work without overwhelming it. Mounts can be layered and combined in many ways to create details and colour in frame design.
Another style of mounting is float mounting, which involves tabbing the artwork to the top of the mountboard, rather than behind a window mount. This is useful if you want to see the edge of the artwork or make a feature of deckled edge paper. Float mounting is often paired with a box frame option, keeping the glass off the work.
Within a box frame we can also shadow float mount. This is where the artwork is tabbed to a smaller backing of recessed board between the artwork and the mountboard, so it’s not visible, creating a look of depth with the piece appearing to float off the background.