Framing a paper tar paper painting! 1938

[Nicole]

image1(1).JPG (138.82 KiB) Viewed 1906 times

I have a challenging framing project recently bought in. It’s a painted picture 44” x 33” (111cm x 84cm) on unusual paper dating from about 1938. The paper was used to line MFO boxes in the army for shipping belongings and supplies around and was a sandwich (about 2-3mm thick) of paper with a tar impregnated fibrous maybe coconut filling to help keep the contents of the crate dry. It is now quite fragile and bits are falling off as it has been stored rolled up in attics and lofts. I am contacting a paper conservation specialist to see what they advise concerning it’s preservation in terms of framing it.
I was really looking for some advice in how to frame it. My thought was to sandwich it with a spacer maybe the 13mm frametech or an obeche fillet to give it room between museum glass and float glass or a conservation board backed by foamcore. I can’t see any other way to fix it but would welcome any suggestions. Please see photos.
I was worried that the 13mm frametech would give it too much room to move around but would try and make the frame tight around all sides to keep it snug.
The customer doesn't want it behind a mount ass the raggedy edges are part of it's charm.
The first photo after the text shows the back of the painting folded over.

[prospero]

Very nice painting. Worth taking some trouble over.

I think you need to see the results of the conservator's work before deciding on the frame design. The whole thing looks very delicate and needs to be stabilised in some form.

Maybe mounting it onto a piece of raw canvas might be a solution. This might look good if the canvas was showing a margin around the tatty edges. This canvas could be put on a stretcher frame or even laced around a board.
But this might not be possible. See what the conservator thinks......

[Roboframer]

The conservator will probably recommend pasting the thing to board - wet mounting - and if the front was stable enough I'd be happy to do that myself. The adhesive and the board used will be better quality than the artwork's support and the conservator could remove it easily if required to - probably wouldn't ever be required to though.

Then float mount it with as much or as little space around as you like/the customer wants.

Canvas on a stretcher frame? No! Why? Makes no sense to me at all.

Lacing - that size? - Especially when the actual artwork has no "give" and is not stretch-able"? No! Why? ....etc