The Framers Forum

Any idea what this mountboard is ?
Thanks in advance

That looks like someone has covered the mount with fabric after the window was cut, you used to be able to get fabric covered mountboard, mostly fine hessian , then when you cut the window, you see the mountcard core at the bevel, these have mainly gone out of fashion. But this one looks like someone has covered the mount after the window was cut, as you can't see the mountcard core at the bevel,

Thanks Steve , yea I found board as you have described which would have the core showing But was confused as it looked covered in the bevel on this type , liked this look though
Thanks for replying !

You can still buy mountboard like this, but it's not cheap! You can still buy hessian and cover mountboard for you self if you are so inclined, but that's probably cheap either and it takes time to do as well. I'm not really very sure that there's much of a market for stuff like this, or that it is going to be producing a worthwhile profit either! Hessian is not exactly what you call cheap these days! Sorry to say this, but it's a bit of a 1960's look!

That is what is called a Wrapped Mount.

There are several companies that do this, all i think in London. They are used mostly on certain antique paper art where you would use a hand-finished or antique frame and then want to avoid the miss-match of using a modern cardboard mount.

These excellent framers make and use them a lot - https://www.pureandapplied.co.uk/

Thank you vintage frames ! Much appreciated

I've done a few wrapped mounts in the past, but mainly with light silk. This is quite stretchy, so you don't have to cut
the fabric to get it into the corners of the bevel - I drymounted it using film and employ the window dropout to mould
it it the corners. Then flip it, cut it and fold the flaps over the back and back in the press. Never tried this with hessian
but it might work. The look is definitely 'retro' but it can look good on the right thing.

I still have a few faux fabric boards of '80s vintage. I drag one out of retirement now an then.

Hi Peter,

That's quite a interesting idea. I've not tried that myself, but I am thinking that a silk wrapped mount would look particularly stunning, but I wonder if the era when we could sell stuff like that is now long gone. I've had a bit of success wraping mounts in wrapping mounts in Nepalesse hand made papers, which are available in various colours including some really vibrant colours, which often look incredibly stunning. They are also avaiable with various inclusions in the paper such as banana seeds, little bits of dried leaves and various whispy bit of vegetation including seed husks. It can be a little bit time consuming working the paper into the corners of the mount aperature with a bone folder and a little bit of steam to ease the paper into the corners a bit. It's not really a good idea, trying to get ready sharp crisp coners, but not to got beyond the radius of the edge of the bone folder as it not only does not work very well, but a slightly radiused effect looks much more effective.

Sometimes the bone folder flattens the fibres of the paper too much, resulting in little shiney areas. These shiney areas are easily revived to lightly moisturising the whole mount and drying it will a little gentile heat. It is also very straight forward to wrap and inner mount using thin strips of dolls house wallpaper, Which often is stupidly expensive and therefore thin strip are much more economical in use. I used to make these using normal thickness strips of mountboard off cuts and fix the in place behind the front mount in the same way as "Bevel Accents". It's fiddly work by the results can look great. Looking in various fabric shops, I have seen various nice, slightly stretchy thin fabrics, which should wook well for creating really nice wrapped mounts. I prefer frabrics which produce a less silky look, as I like a more aged and muted effect, because I am often going for a rather more vintage look.

It is often possible to repeat a motive on the mount also on to a flat cetre portion of a stacked moulding frame, for the same frames item. I have not done many like this and in each case thay have been intended purely as a window display. but sooner, or later someone wants to buy it and won't take no for an answer. I find that working out what price to charge for such items is very difficult and too be honest, I think that stuff like this appeals to quite a limited market and therefore has only limited potential, unless you are based in a really top quality, up market location with customers with plenty of money. I originally bought the necessary malerials, because I wanted to practice my skills when I was still developing as a relatively new framer and just wanted some demonstration pieces to wow, my early customers, but I soon learned easier and less time consuming techniques.

Crescent did a range of 'Silki' boards and two were very useful on Oriental art. They were silk effect with little
'snags' here and there. One a nice dark gold and the other a Champagne gold. The cores were a nice brown colour.
There have been others similar but not so classy as the Crescent. Unlike hessian they haven't really dated. They have long-since
been disco'd though. I squeezed a couple of mounts out of my offcuts only a couple of years ago.
The wrapping thing is one of those techniques that you try and get great results but once done you never do it again because
you simply can't charge enough.