How would you mount this?

[huguito]

I have a print on a stiff thick textured fine art paper, I rip the edges with a deckle ruler.
I love the look of this image and like to see it floating with the edges exposed, no glass.
Behind the floating print I like to use a smooth matting board, or unprinted canvas.

I have pressed the print on my dry mounting press and is perfectly flat,keeping all the texture of the paper, no weaves at all.

My question is:

Would you glue with something like miracle muck or dry mount to a board and then board to the back panel?
If you use a panel in between would you prefer matt board or gatorboard?
Would you just mount the print directly on the back panel? I like to see a bit of separation between them.
Would you consider using double sided archival tape? I am afraid of waves developing on the print after the print gets to contract and expand few times.

Hugo

[bill t.]

I used to glue my wife's torn-edge Arches art paper to various mounting boards with very good success.

Roll glue onto the back of the print, staying an inch or so away from the edges.

Weight down the glue covered center of the print with a piece of plywood with four, round-tipped nails in it, where the tips are sanded round, and there is a weight on the plywood.  Just the tips of the nails contact the back of the glued print.  This locks the print in position on the table while leaving the still dry edges exposed.

VERY CAREFULLY roll or brush glue out the edges, being sure not to apply so much pressure that the print shifts and glue gets on the front of the deckled edges.  A small amount of the water based glue on the front of the deckles is not too bad, but try to avoid it.

Pick the entire glue print up and place on your mounting board.  Use pins or blades to pry up the edges.  Press down the center first to lock the print down, then with your fingers only gradually work the print out toward the edge and pat down the deckles with vertical-only finger motions.

If you have a pin light source right above the art as you lower it, you can see the sharp shadow of the art on the mounting board.  If you first draw some positioning marks on the mounting board inside the area that will be covered, it's pretty to get exact positioning of the art on the board, but you really need a person on either side of the art to get it right, otherwise you can't see the marks well enough.

You inevitably get glue on your fingers during this step, so have some wet towels handy to de-glue your fingers before patting down the prints, or put on cotton gloves for the pat down.

Very easy the second time you try it.

The current too-cool way of presenting prints where the qualities of the paper itself are important is to display them in shadow-boxes, like this.  Preserves all the tactile qualities of the print, ripple, edge curl, and all.  I like it.

[crwoo]

That sounds like a beautiful and elegant way to mount fine art, could you share pictures?

[bill t.]

Sorry, that was a while ago, no surviving pictures.  But it does feel kind of artsy to do.  The final presentation was a print mounted flush on an off-color white backing in an aluminum sectional frame, with a Nielsen profile that floated the glass above the print by about 3/4 inch.  It had a shadowbox look.  If I did it again I would probably loosely mount the prints on the backing to emphasize the dimensional qualities of the print.

[huguito]

Thanks Bill
The idea I had in mind was very similar to the pieces on the picture, just without the glass

How would you choose to secure the board that has the print glued to on the substrate behind it? That substrate would go edge to edge on the shadow box, could be canvas, matt board or woodfrom the back panel of the frame.

Same as the print to the board with glue?
Small french cleat?
Coupe of strips of double sided tape?

[bill t.]

I would probably mount the print directly on 1/2" or 1" white Gator or similar material, which would eliminate the need for an additional backing.  Gator designed for direct printing is very white, although it may be too bright as a backing for certain prints.  Gator that size is expensive, but maybe close to the cost of having two boards and all the fuss that would require.

Have also seen prints loosely mounted to a backing using what look like small, transparent tie wraps.  You can see just the unattached heads of the tie wraps scattered around the print.   I guess they cut a slit down through the print and all the way through the backing, and I guess the long piece of the tie wrap was secured on the other side by another tie wrap head.  The tie wrap heads are not looped on the front, they're just poked straight through to another tie wrap head on the back and the prints hang on the exposed heads.  I guess.  Would be sort of archival, as all you have in the print after removal would be a small slit that could be burnished back together, sort of.  Unless the print was ripped to shreds by those things from bad handling.  There must be a better way, but I'm not sure what it is.  Would like to hear suggestions.

It's best not to involve any kind of tape in framing.  I just doesn't last and your piece goes from looking cool to crap in a very short time.  Artwork often gets spotlighted which raises the temperature very fast.  For instance enclosed frames and shadowboxes heat up a lot inside, they're basically greenhouses.  When nobody's looking at a gallery put your hand on the surface of a glassed, spotlighted frame, it'll probably feel hot.  Open frames and glassless displays have some advantages with the heat issues.  But even without heating tape will eventually fail.

[huguito]

The reason I mentioned a "sandwich", with the print at one end, a board attached to the print on the front side. And a back board attached to the back side of the board in the middle of the sandwich, is to create a bit of a distance between the back board and the print.
Just to make it look more like floating, maybe keeping the print separated 1/16" to 1/4" from the back board

The back board could be finished in a number of different ways, Matt board, Canvas, Painted or stained wood, polished or rusted metal, etc...

[huguito]

Hi Bill

Quick question for you or anyone that has some experience gluing a thick matte paper to the backing, what kind or brand of glue did you use?

Did you try to keep the coat of glue very thin?   
Did you lay it thick?
How wide is the edge of the print that you are willing to leave without glue?

[bill t.]

I guess you mean laminate a thin matte sheet over a thicker carrier substrate?

Would just roll out Miracle Muck on the substrate, or maybe the clear-drying version of Titebond, or almost any white PVA glue to the thicker piece.  Even Elmer's white glue.  Do lots of back and forth rolling at 90 angles and also full length from side to side until it is starting to get tacky, at that point it will have a bumpy surface with a noticeable gloss.  Scrutinize the glue surface with an eagle eye for any lumps in the glue.  Don't rush, you want the glue to be a little tacky.  Then from one end lay down the thick matte and bray it down with a cotton-gloved hand.

If you aren't going to do this often, find a framer with a big vacuum press.  If you have a roller laminator, use that.

Very import to strain the glue through a kitchen style strainer to remove any lump from the glue, it takes just one particle of dried glue in mix to put a ridiculous looking bump in whatever you're mounting.  Those little particles get generated mostly when you remove and replace the cap, but you can also get them by swiping the surface to be glued with your fingers if there's a thin glue film on your fingers.  Always use a fresh roller that you have cleaned by dabbing with a piece of masking tape.  Yes, you can store a wet roller in a plastic bag for a long time, but that invites the development of lumps that can be successfully pressed down if you are mounting canvas, but not when you are gluing any kind of rigid, smooth surface which will always leave you with some sort of surface artifact.

Thin is not necessary.  Be sure to put down enough glue to get into the pores of both surfaces.  You can tell if you have too much glue if you can't get it rolled down to an even looking surface.  You probably need about  4 ounces/ 100ml for a 32 x 40 inch sheet, plus maybe another 3 ounces to soak into the roller is it's dry when you start.

There's always the possibility of warping, depending on the relative stiffness and other properties of the surfaces.  You might want to flatten the piece with some books or even gently clamped-down books at the edges of the table.

[Peter McLennan]

Awesome stuff, Bill.  For glue mounting a 30X40 is half inch Gator absolutely necessary?

[bill t.]

A 32 x 40 matboard glued to 3/16 Gator should be more than rigid and awesomely flat, when everything finally dries.  Based on never having tried it.  YMMV.

I was extrapolating from recent experiments mounting heavy inkjet media to Gator.  I can from experience say that Silver Rag, Pura Velvet, all the Epson Hot and Cold Press variants, Museo Max, and couple others will lay flat as a board on 3/16 Gator after 8 to 12 hours of mild to moderate warping right after the gluing, and that includes print sizes much larger than 32 x 40.