The Framers Forum

A Gallery customer of ours has said one of his clients has asked for a picture to be framed "passe-partout". I have understood this to be a type of clipframe with tape around the edges instead of clips, but understand it can also refer to a mounting technique.

Can anybody help with this description

Thanks

There was a common method of 'economy' framing where glass and backs where bound together with extremely sticky black tape. No frame.
These are commonly refered to as passe-partout frames.

But I have also heard mountboard refered to as passe-partout.

prospero wrote:There was a common method of 'economy' framing where glass and backs where bound together with extremely sticky black tape. No frame.
These are commonly refered to as passe-partout frames.

But I have also heard mountboard refered to as passe-partout.

Wasn't Passè Partout the sidekick of Phinias Fog in Around the World in Eighty Days?

Yes, that's the guy.

The translation is 'master key'. But like a lot of French expressions the literaltranslation does not always make complete sense in English.

cul-de-sac (bottom of the bag)

iantheframer wrote:A Gallery customer of ours has said one of his clients has asked for a picture to be framed "passe-partout". I have understood this to be a type of clipframe with tape around the edges instead of clips, but understand it can also refer to a mounting technique.

Think it is french for window mount or a frame as prospero described
Take your pick

prospero wrote: cul-de-sac (bottom of the bag)

Aperitif (A set of dentures)

Coup de gras (Mow the lawn)

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le gare!)

It's wonderful, but it's not the railway station...


(dedicated to any Fred Dag fans out there. )

Simply genius.

Tout manteau de fourrure et aucune culotte.

Is that a Frenchwoman living in Morningside in Edinburgh ?(Very posh area)

I have always understood passepartout to be the black tape round a sandwich of glass, mount (if used) picture and backing. We often get these in to redo. Usually the customer is too mean to get the thing properly reframed, or wants to keep it the way they always remember it. I also know that is what the French call mountboard. I have a French customer we racially abuse by calling Monsieur Frog - well his friends call him that to his face! He even bought a rubber stamp of a frog from us for that reason. Anyway to get back to the reason for this rambling. M. Grenouille always calls it passepartout when he comes to buy packs of my offcuts to paint on.

Well you can still get it from Lion if you want it, although I doubt that Filmoplast, or whoever makes it (Neschen?) intended it for that use.

Also available in white and grey.

That's who I buy it from.

For hinge-ing mount to undermount?

The type of cloth tape available from Lion is not the same as the passe partout tape which ceased manufacture at the end of the 1980s, which was a gummed paper tape with a patterned/stippled front. Water was applied to make the tape sticky. The final manufacturer of the old style passe partout tape in England (I'm not sure about the rest of the UK) was a company called Samuel Jones.

Lawrence & Aitken were the main manufacturers of Passe-partout and gummed gilt papers for use in mount lining, they disappeared sometime in the late 1980's.