Mounting 100+ year old wood block prints

Create a Post
Emma Hayes

Emma Hayes

Grumbler in Training
Joined
Jun 2, 2020
Posts
8
Loc
Old Hickory, TN
Business
Picture This
Hello everyone! We had a customer come through recently asking about what our process would be to mount a 100 year old and 150 year old Japanese wood block prints without damaging the prints. I have not seen them in person yet as they were just inquiring. I tried urging them to wait until they get back stateside (we live in Okinawa, Japan with the US military) as we are not well versed in conservation framing and do not have great humidity control in our shop, however they are too concerned about the movers damaging them or them getting lost in the mail. I would send them to one of the other base frame shops except we are the most experienced shop, and the language barrier is too high off base for them to try. Any advice either for me on how to do this properly or advice for the customer to keep them safe until they get back stateside where there are more experts would be much appreciated. Thank you!
 
Hard to advice, not knowing a whole lot about them and what condition they are in. How are they stored now?
Would you just mount them, without glass/frame, so more for transport I mean?
What materials do you have access to? As in, cotton rag mats, paper for hinges, wheat paste and so on.
 
It seems odd to me that the techniques needed to hinge mount these woodblocks comes from Japan, yet there is no one there you can have perform traditional hinging.
Packing the pieces properly and having them moved with their household belongings, or hand carrying them, seems like a good alternative until they can get them to a framer that already knows the techniques (I would not experiment on someone else's art when learning how to do a traditional hinge mount).
Their argument's big hole is that the damage from broken glass would be the bigger risk factor if they were to frame them before shipping them home.
These are usually lightweight enough that they can be interleaved with tissue or glassine and rolled around a mailing tube, then padded and inserted into a larger mailing tube for travel.
The Japanese words for the process involve Washi, the mulberry paper the hinges are made from, and Nori, the rice starch paste used to adhere the hinges to the back of the print.
 
In my early days of being a picture framer, I saw a lot of shipping damage from corporate families returning back to the US. There was always a lot of water damage from the shipping crates.
My suggestion is to make sure that the art is enclosed in sealed bags for the voyage.
 
Good suggestions from both Wally and Jerry. Another alternative I was thinking of would be to put them between glassine and foam board sheets and then sandwich that between sheets of hardboard taped all around on the outside so it is not bendable. As Jerry suggested, I would wrap that in plastic too.
:cool: Rick
 
I agree with all above.
Far safer to carefully ship them as is.
If shipping flat, perhaps adding unbendable material outside of the foamboard padding would add extra security?
If shipping rolled, a larger diameter tube like the kind used in construction would be very durable and require less curling to the artwork.
The cost of building appropriately safe packaging for fully framed valuables like these would be very prohibitive as well.
So many factors of shipping a complete frame package from Japan to the US that could cause harm.
 
Create a Post
Back
Top