MAT BOARDS FOR PICTURE FRAMING

MAT BOARDS- The mat board around a print has a JOB and that JOB  is to protect the art work by separating the glass from the art (paper or photography).  If glass is laying directly on paper art or a photo when the glass is subjected to temperature changes it will sweat and it will sweat on the inside and damage you art or cause the glass to stick to photographic art.

There are many types of mat boards; regular wood pulp with a buffered acid neutralizer added. and cotton ph neutral, white cores, metal, marble, suede, leathers and more. Go with your budget. Even the regular wood pulp mats are PH buffered and will outlive you.  Acid and museum quality are best for find art work because the value of that art will benefit your children and their children.

NOTE: The photographic paper that is presently being used will stick to glass very readily, especially High gloss.  So DO NOT PUT IT UNDER GLASS WITH THE GLASS TOUCHING THE PHOTO.  You can mount the photo and put it in the frame with no glass or you can use a frame space to separate the art and the glass.  (Frame space can be your mat or it can be thin piece of wood or plastic strips around the inside of the frame behind the glass to separate the photo from the glass and photo should be mounted to a hard surface board to do this)

STANDARD mat boards are made with wood pulp fibers and have the natural occurring lignin (which is acidic) and the pulp is buffered with an alkaline (calcium carbonate) to neutralize the acid. These mats will normally hold their neutrality for 50-100 years

ACID FREE MATS are made from cotton fibers and do not have lignin and are ph neutral and are the best for your art work, but they generally run about twice the cost of the standard wood pulp mats.  With few exceptions these mats also have calcium carbonate added to help them to hold their neutral ph.  I might mention that the new resin coated photography papers are somewhat sensitive to the calcium carbonate, so in photography you only have a couple of mats that are recommended for that art form

Other mats available are textured mats, marble, precious metals, embossed, suede and leather.

MOUNT. A lot of my customers use the terms Mat and Mount interchangeably and this is not proper. Mounting a print indicates that you have glued it down to the backing board. This process is best done by someone who is knowledgably about the procedure.  Mouting helps to keep the art from becoming wrinkled from humidity. I'm sure you have seen a poster print in a frame and it's all "wavy" well that's from the paper taking moisture from the air and it causes the paper fibers to swell and thus producing the wrinkles.  Mounting prevents the buckling is most cases.  It is possible under really humid circumstances for the print and the backing board both to buckle. Mounting a signed and numbered limited edition is considered a "NO_NO", because it alters the issued condition of the art and will affect the value of the art. However, the artist can mount it before selling, because it is his/her art and the artist can do what they please with it, but the customer is not afforded that luxury.

This short description does not and is not intended to be a complete information package for mats but only to get you started.  If you are really interested do some further reading.