The Framers Forum

Hi all,

I’m looking for a bit of advice on behalf of a customer.

He has a fairly expensive limited edition print that he’s wanting framed.

The paper size of the print is 500mm x 750mm but the image size is 300mm x 300mm in the middle of the paper with the artists signature directly underneath the image.

He wants an inch border round the image and then a 65mm mount.

That then leaves roughly 20mm at the sides and 145mm at the top and bottom ‘sticking out’
The question is, if you trim the excess paper, will it affect the value of the limited edition print?

He knows how he wants it framed and what would look good but given the value of the print he wants to make sure it won’t devalue it if it’s trimmed.

I look forward to hearing some feedback.

Thanks,

Ian

Trimming a limited edition always is a bad move and yes it does devalue the print and it does completely destroy any value it may have to a serious collector. You not only need to hide the unwanted parts of the border around the print, but keep the edge of the paper from being to close to to wood inside the frame. Wood can be a source of damaging acid.

Conservation mountboard should always be considered the minimum level of mountboard quality for all limited edition prints and U.V. blocking glass should be offered to the customer as a means of protecting the print from damaging rays of U.V. light, which is not only damaging to the colour pigments used in the print, but over time also causes damage to the structure of the paper, eventually making the paper fragile as well. There should also be a conservation quality piece of mountboard behind the print and many framers go further than this, but adding a piece of Mylar film between the under mount behind the the print and the backing board.

In bygone years, the backing boards for pictures were often pine board, some framers even lined inside of those pine boards with sheets of news paper. Modern framers would not dream of using newspaper these days, but I've opened the backs of many of the old frames and seen how the worst acid damage from acid immerging from these boards has mostly affected the newspaper and hardly affected the artwork in comparison to the pages of the newspaper. Needless to say the hinging methods used to attach the print to the under mount, need to be completely reversible and self adhesive hinging tapes are to be avoided, as these are not technically fully reversible.

If it's a 'collectable' print and you were a collector and had the choice of buying a mint copy or a trimmed copy.
which would you go for? Thus any 'mutilation' can impact on the market value dramatically.

If the customer insists, hand them a pair of scissors and let them trim off the ££££££££££s.


** I once had a chap wanting to sell his collection of Robert Taylor l/e prints. There were some tasty ones.
BUT, a mate of his had framed them at a 'good' price. Trimmed and drymounted. I estimated the secondary market value
of the collection (mint) at about £16K. As they were they were essentially unsaleable. Enough Said.

As my two honourable members have said,if you do trim,get the customer to sign a disclaimer regarding that they have gone against your advice, also put a copy of the disclaimer in the back of the framed picture

Seems to be very lazy printers around at the moment, they print on standard size paper, such as A3 , A2 etc and don't trim the paper down to a nice managable boarder of white paper, there is a very popular artist here, who gets her square images printed , but they are on A3 paper, smack in the middle, so you get about a 1cm of paper on the sides 7.5cm top & bottom

Thanks everyone. I knew I could rely on you to help me out.
Will let the customer know and let them decide.
Thanks again

Just give it a mount width larger than the print.