Blue Silk and Gilded Mount

The inner mount is gilded in 23.5ct gold leaf using an acrylic gold size on dark brown painted base, it is then sealed with shellac. The top mount is blue silk. 

Silk photo frame

The silk fabric on this antique photo frame was really tatty and worn, so it is being replaced with new material.

Large silk board

This large piece of ivory silk material has been mounted onto mountboard, it has been left under a sheet of glass to keep it as flat as possible. Next it will be given an iron to reactivate the adhesive and create a strong bond between silk and board.

Green silk

Here are some mounts covered in green silk fabric with a gold slip. The mount aperture is cut and then an adhesive is brushed on the mount board, the adhesive is left to dry. It dries to a slightly tacky surface so the fabric is then positioned and smoothed down firmly. A tacking iron is then used to reactivate the adhesive and create a good bond with the silk.

Silk strips

The rebate of this frame have been lined with silk which is then soaked with glue, this is to reinforce the rebate. As mentioned in an early post the excessive routering has made the rebate weak.

Bamboo frames and silk mounts

Here are two of the silk mounts from a few posts ago. 

Silk mounts and gold slips

Fabric covered mounts can look great, they seem to be very popular in America but for some reason they are not that big over here.
The mounts above are covered in a pongee silk with a gold mount slip.

First I cut the bevel edged mount as usual although the bevel was reversed which is common practice when you intend to add a mount slip (some people call them fillets). The silk was adhered to the face of the mount and the excess was removed from the aperture with just 3/4" of  overhang which could be folded round and stuck down at the back. I then put some double sided tape, called fillet tape, on the back of the mount close to the aperture edge. The gold mount slip was cut to size and fixed in place with the double sided tape. The bottom photo shows the mount slip has been covered with aluminium foil tape which protects the artwork from any impurities in the wooden slip.

Finished silk framing

Damage to woven silk artwork

These collectable woven silk pictures were framed many years ago, sellotape and double sided tape were used to fix them and this has caused damage and marking around the image. You can see in the bottom photo, the adhesive in the tape has badly marked the front of the material.