During the past twenty years we've seen a growing awareness regarding the long term preservation of framed objects. This awareness, which comes as an entire set of materials, techniques, and products, is collectively knows as "conservation" picture framing. Lets break it down into its various parts and talk about each one.

Glass. It used to be picture framers offered two types of glass: clear glass and non-glare. Today there are several types of framing glass, or glazing, to choose from, and it all relates to what light does to framed objects. This is specifically true of light above the visual spectrum in the Ultra Violet range. These high energy waves causes the most damage to art work, breaking down the pigments used to create colorful things. The answer to this problem is either don't expose your art work to light, or protect it from light damage with a UV blocking medium. We carry UV glass in clear, reflection control, and "museum" grade glass. They all block about 99% of UV radiation. (As a side point, standard clear glass blocks about 44% of UV radiation.)

Mat Board. When we use a window mat to accent your artwork, its important to think about acid content. You've seen how newspapers turn brown with age, well, this is caused by the acid in the wood pulp used to make the paper. The cells in a tree are held together by a substance called lignin, and when a tree is harvested, pulped, and made into paper, the lignin begins to break down and become acidic. This acid will leach into, and ultimately discolor and damage, anything it touches. There are two primary ways to get around this problem. First of all, start out with cotton instead of wood, and you eliminate the acid problem all together. This is our favorite type of mat board, commonly called "rag" mat. The other solution is to add an alkali agent to the wood pulp to neutralize its acid content.

Mounting Board. We use 100% acid free and PCB free foam core board. You already know why acid is bad, so lets discuss PCBs. Products made form foam tend to "off gas" over time. Have you ever wondered about that strange haze which always seems to accumulate on the inside of your car's windshield? Well, this is an example of off gassing. The sun strikes the foam and vinyl of your dash, this causes off gassing, it floats up, and deposits on the inside of your windshield, fogging the glass. If we didn't use PCB free backing materials, you would have the same type of fogging on the inside of the glass we put on your framed objects.

Mounting Techniques. How we mount your treasures in a frame is most important. Conservation framing means we avoid ALL adhesives, and it also means the mounting techniques we use must be fully reversible. Here are a few examples to help clarify. We mount signed and numbered prints using archive grade corner pockets, so the print can be taken back out of the frame job with no damage to the print. We sew and lace fabrics using a small series of stitches, which can be cut from the back of the mounting board, with no damage to the fabric. We hand pin cross stitch so that the pins could later be removed and the cross stitch would easily come off the foam core mounting board. Paper objects are often "encapsulated" in a clear conservation grade film called Mylar D. Here is quick story to illustrate the importance of conservation mounting. On the Antiques Road Show, a man brought in a set of very old baseball cards. They would have been worth a considerable amount. Unfortunately, they had been glued to mat board, and were nearly worthless as a result.

Hanging your artwork. If you have a specifically precious and or expensive piece of framed art or a family keepsake, and you want to minimize light damage, by all means use conservation glass, but also think about where you will hang it. Try to use an interior wall of your house which receives the minimum amount of direct sunlight. Also try to avoid bright spot lights that shine directly into the framed item.