Ad blocker detected: Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.
I understand what needs doing and it's all fine, except that I find that where the tape (archival gum tape is what I've tried so far) is attached to the rear of the paper (ie. the artwork) it shows from the front. I guess it's to do with the added moisture or something.
With pre-gummed tape you have little control; the only control you have is the size you cut (tear) the tape to, both in length and width, the amount of water you apply to activate it and the length of time you allow it to go off before applying the tape to the artwork.
Wet-torn hinges made from Japanese tissue have 'feathered' edges, at the ends and the sides, the tissue comes in many shades and weights and freshly-cooked starch paste can be cooked to any consistency you like, from runny-as-hell to something you can pick up and roll between your finger and thumb, and, if you like, you can apply the paste to just the fibres of the feathered edges of the hinges, which can also be as long or as short as you like.
You're in control.
A good exercise is to get 3 pieces of paper - tissue, photocopy (type of) paper and a decent weight watercolour (type of) paper and see how they react to different types of hinge and different 'wetnesses' but whatever type of hinge you use, it's always a good idea to allow the moisture to go off until it's not shiney - and for some papers, for quite a time after that.
When you wet the tape do you give it a minute or two (dependent on ambient temp. etc) to absorb the water? If you don't that water is going to get taken up by the artwork.
Try this little experiment. Tear of a length of tape, wet the gummed side and put it down on the bench. You will see it forms a curved shape but as the water gets absorbed by the adhesive it flattens. That's the time to apply it to the artwork.
I use the dropout method described on the Lion site for mounting and once I've applied the moistened hinge to the artwork blot the hinge for a few minutes to absorb through the hinge. Very new to framing but have found this work well for me.
I've just got myself some Japanese hinging paper and wheat starch, but have a quick query. I read that you need to put a blotter on top of the hinge once it's in situ, then a weight on top of the blotter. Does the blotter have to be anything special, or will regular blotting paper do it, or even some scrap mount card? And how much weight is necessary? Will a regular paper weight do it?
You can get 'acid free' blotting paper but kitchen roll is fine. The weights can be anything really, a tape dispenser, whatever, but a few purpose-made/bought weights are handy things to have around. I have four, two of them are granite kitchen worktop samples with suedette board bonded to them, which I replace from time-to-time and the other two I made myself from about twenty 4" squares of glass, stuck together with contact adhesive and wrapped with suedette - and then wrapped again with melinex to make them wipe-cleanable.
Never use any kind of adhesive process such as spray mounting or dry mounting because these processes permanently alter the artwork and are not considered proper conservation techniques.
For reasons of preservation, you will want to minimize the amount of adhesive you put in contact with the paper and for the best lay-flat affect you want to avoid restraining the artwork's natural tendency to "breathe" (to expand and contract as it absorbs and rejects moisture in the air) by taping it as little as possible with the least amount of liquid. Therefore, you want to use only two tabs of tape to hold the artwork against its backing. The backing, in this case, will be mat board.
It is recommended that you hinge mount your artwork without permanently adhering it to the mounting board. Hinges should be removable with water or a small amount of alcohol. You should use a material with enough strength to hold your artwork in place but also have the ability to pull free if the art is dropped. Therefore is the hinge tears and you don't want it to tear your artwork. The best and most common materials for this are rice paper hinges, linen tape and some archival pressure sensitive tapes.
