Mounting a print and putting it in an enclosure

Purpose

To finish a print as an object: flat, trimmed, spotted, attached by a method that can be undone, and labelled with the things nobody else could reconstruct.

When to use it

After the print is dry and its residual tests have been read, and not before. Why a wet print is rescuable and a dry one much less so belongs to Part XII; a print mounted before its tests are read is a fault sealed into a package.

Before you start

You should already know why a fibre sheet curls and a resin-coated one does not, and why the window mat is structural before it is decorative, from the finishing lab.

Level A. The only hazards in this half are mechanical and they arrive when attention is worst: a hot platen used closed, and a fresh blade against a steel rule on a mat with the free hand behind the blade line. Nothing wet stands near the press.

Handling controls protect the print rather than you: freshly washed hands, or clean lint-free cotton or nitrile gloves; no contact with the image surface; an auxiliary support of acrylic or rag board under any sheet that is turned over.

On the bench: blotters, a flat board and weight; a steel rule, a mat, fresh blades; a 000 or 0000 sable brush with neutral and warm dyes; mount board, backing board, hinging tissue and starch paste or photo corners; a soft pencil and a pigment-ink pen that states it passes the Photographic Activity Test.

Procedure

Flatten

1. Decide first whether the print is dry or damp. Add moisture before you add force: a dry gelatin layer relieves bending strain by fracturing rather than deforming.
2. For an ordinary curl, lay the print face up between clean blotters under a flat board and a weight for a day or two.
3. For a hard curl or a rolled print, raise the humidity around it slowly in a closed box with damp blotters that do not touch it, then dry it flat under weight.
4. For a press, use it dry with no tissue — the print between clean release paper at a low setting, in and out in seconds, then straight under a cold weight.

Trim and spot

5. Trim only after the print is flat, against a steel rule on a mat, in good light, with a fresh blade.
6. Load the brush, discharge most of it on scrap, and build each mark up from light to dark in many small touches, matching the tone around it under the light the print will be seen in.
7. Use neutral dye on neutral paper and warm dye on warm-tone. Do not attempt a black mark, a scratch through the emulsion or a badly printed area: dye only darkens.

Attach

8. Choose the attachment, and write the choice and its reason on the label. Hinging is the default because it can be undone.
9. Hinge with two pieces of Japanese tissue and starch paste along the top edge only, so the print hangs and moves with humidity.
10. Or use corners of inert plastic or good paper with an acid- and rubber-free adhesive, for a sturdy, undecayed print.
11. Or over-mat, which attaches nothing: the window mat holds the print by covering its edges.
12. Dry mount only where flatness matters more to this print than reversibility does, and only on fibre base. The tissues’ published activation band starts at the top of, and runs above, the maximum drying temperature the resin-coated paper makers publish, so there is no dry-mounting procedure here for resin-coated paper. If you insist, test on a spoiled sheet from the same box and expect to lose it.

Enclose and label

13. Buy board against the claim that it meets ISO 18902, and keep the specification with the receipt. The words acid-free, archival, museum-quality and conservation board are neither standardised nor legal.
14. Choose buffered board for a silver gelatin print and unbuffered for a cyanotype, and record which you used, because the answer is process-specific rather than universal.
15. Build the package so that nothing touches the image surface: glazing, an air gap held by the window mat, the print on its hinges, the mat board, the filler board, the back paper.
16. Sign in soft pencil in the margin or on the mount, or with a pigment-ink pen that states it passes the Photographic Activity Test.
17. Write the label for the back of the frame or folder: what the picture is, when it was made, who made it, when and by whom it was framed.
18. Add what nobody else can reconstruct: paper and box code, developer and dilution, the printing map’s version, the wash sequence, the two residual test results, the toner if any, and the mounting decision from step 8.
19. File the unmounted control print, if you kept one, with the label’s own copy.

How you know it worked

• The print lay flat without a crack, and it was damp rather than dry when force was applied.
• Nothing touches the image surface anywhere in the package, glazing included.
• The attachment can be undone, or the label says plainly that it cannot and why.
• The board was bought against a standard and the standard is written down.
• The label carries the processing history, not only the title and the date.

If a step fails

Step 1, a fine crack has appeared running with the curl. It is not repairable and it is not a spotting problem. The print was too dry: humidify the next one first, and record the failure against the method rather than against the sheet.

Step 3, the print is still cockled after a day under weight. Give it longer rather than more weight. Restraint plus time is what flattens; pressure alone is what cracks.

Step 5, the blade wanders off the rule. Change the blade before you change your grip.

Step 6, the spot reads as a hole. The dye is the wrong temperature for the paper. Neutral dye on a warm-black print reads cold; mix warm into it and rebuild from lighter than you think.

Step 12, the tissue would not tack. Stop rather than raising the temperature. On a resin-coated sheet the softening of the polyethylene is the mechanism the paper makers warn about, and the press is a hot surface with pressure behind it.

Step 13, the board’s specification names only the Photographic Activity Test, or only a pH. That is not the same claim. Buy against the full standard or record in the label what the board was actually tested for.

Step 14, the print is a cyanotype and the only board is buffered. Do not mount it: an alkaline reserve is the wrong environment for that chemistry.

What to record

The label, and a copy of it in your own file: the picture, the date, the maker, the framer and the framing date, the paper and box, the developer and dilution, the map version, the wash sequence, both residual test results, the toner, the board’s standard, and the attachment method with the reason it was chosen. Then the storage location, so that the print and its record can be found by the same query.