Help sheepskin

Create a Post
T

thehadmatter

CGF, Certified Grumble Framer
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Posts
199
Loc
Central USA
My coworker took in an order for a sheepskin a while back. It was glued down to a backing board and the customer wanted to change out the frame. I advised my coworker to leave as it was mounted and just change the frame. He insisted the sheepskin should be removed and he did such. When he placed it in the frame it had a wrinkled appearance. The customer took it home but this morning brought it back and wants to know what we can do to remove the wrinkles. I know we can't put this in our vacuum press. Is there anything we can do with this?
 
At first, I thought this thread related to Hanna's wonderful game of SHEEP! Then I realized the seriousness of this question.

You were 100% right... it should have been left alone.

can_of_worms.jpg


I feel for you.

Hopefully someone will have a suggestion for you as to how to satisfy the customer, but in the meantime I'd make the owner of the store aware of your dilemma so there are not any surprises.
Your bossmman or woman should contact a conservator.
 
Fire the coworker first, then contact a conservator. Nevermind, don't fire them, just make them pay for the treatment.
 
Have your coworker write out 100 times 'I must not undo that which I have not the knowledge to redo'.

Then go see a conservator.

Just to make your coworker really miserable, read him/her the following quote from a conservator:
"Because of the nature of animal skin, parchment and vellum objects have acutely hygroscopic properties and are liable, even over a very short period of time, to unevenly change shape in all dimensions. This obviously produces serious problems when trying to hold an object in a certain position within a mount or frame without damage occurring. Expansion and contraction of parchment and vellum through environmental fluctuations, can have disastrous effects on an object, especially if movement is limited at certain points because of attachment to a mount or backboard. A very common form of damage caused is cockling. This symptom can cause destabilisation of areas of pigmentation and gilding, resulting in problems such as flaking pigments and the cupping, tenting and loss of gilded areas. Obviously, if an object was kept in an ideal and most importantly consistent environment, (55% relative humidity 20'c temperature) there would be little, if any, movement and consequently little opportunity for damage to occur. Realistically however, an object's environment cannot always be controlled to such an extent and so, a certain amount of compensation must be allowed with regard to expansion and contraction."

​
And of course, have the coworker pay for both the remediation treatment, and for the conservator to perform the correct mounting procedure.
 
I don't know....can you really make the worker pay for it? Doesn't the buck stop with the owner? Seriously?
I would think it's one thing if the worker offered to pay for it...
 
Look in The Grumble archives. There are many threads on how to mount a sheepskin diploma. It was not so long ago that this was considered basic framing practices.

In all probability, the only thing a conservator will do is clean off all the old glue, put it in some archival packaging and charge you around five or six hundred dollars. I doubt if even conservators today know how to properly mount a sheepskin.

Conservators are interested in restoration and long term conservation. Mounting, or "gluing down" is a picture framers task. It is a method of display, not of preservation.

This whole issue was just hashed around once again just a month or so ago on The Grumble. It amazes me that so few picture framers today know so little about this subject.

"I don't know anything about it, so I'll recommend it be sent to a conservator. People will think I'm real knowledgeable when I say stuff like that."

As a side note: In most states you can not charge an employee for their mistakes. The theory is, if the owner had trained and managed the person properly, the mistake would not have occurred.

This is not all that big of a mistake, all you have to do is re-mount it, if you know how. It is NOT just glued down.

John
 
Oops, I just read CAframers post. It seems mounting is a method of preservation when it comes to animal skin diplomas. It does make a whole lot of sense.

John
 
There are some really interesting mounting methods used by some conservators, including a thread method and a really neat expandable hinge method. Those were the types of methods I had in mind in my earlier post. They are designed to handle normal climatic variations.

Personally I would eschew permanent mounting, although as John points out, in times gone by it was common place.

Comments about getting the errant framer to pay are largely tongue in cheek. Although I would certainly make him/her eat some crow.

Maybe the coworker is co-owner? I might refer to my spouse and co-owner as a co-worker (or probably some less flattering term) if she screwed up!!!!! Then for sure I'd make her pay ... one way or another!
 
Errant framer is owner's brother-in-law. Do a search for "while I was out thread" for further clarification on situation if interested.
So if I'm not calling a conservator, is anyone willing to give instruction on how to handle this piece as I have not dealt with on before. The customer wants me to handle this from here and the co-worker I mentioned says there isn't anything to do with it. Quite frankly, he is bent out of shape that they even returned it and he is not trained to be doing this or making any judgement calls on framing. But he likes to play one between the hours of 8 and 5.
 
Sorry I was such a jerk on my first post, I just woke up, no coffee yet.

Here is an old Grumble thread on the subject:

http://www.thegrumble.com/archive/index.php/t-16942.html

Orton, an old time Grumbler is on this thread with some of his much respected insights. The whole thread is well worth reading.

There are more. You can also do a Google search "mounting sheepskin diplomas"

good luck.

John
 
JRB said:
"I don't know anything about it, so I'll recommend it be sent to a conservator. People will think I'm real knowledgeable when I say stuff like that."


John
Click to expand...

I think there is a lot to be said for knowing and acknowledging one's limits of. While one might score points with a customer for taking on a job outside the field of expertise, all credibility is lost if something goes wrong.
 
I just had a 16 X 20, 100 year old sheepskin flattened by a conservator. The wrinkles were so severe that you couldn't read most of the words on it and the peaks of the wrinkles were about one inch high, spaced less than an inch apart. It now looks really good with just a few minor "waves". The customer came in to see it and look at some frame design options and was very pleased with the way it came out. Conservation cost was $70.

I hadn't thought about mounting it but I would hate to see it come back next year looking like it did before. I wonder if these things have memory of their shriveled state and want to return to it.
 
Doug, I think you're pretty safe..... the only memory they seem to have is gamboling about that grassy field right before loosing their head.
 
Yes, she's serving a much higher calling now with the being printed on and all. That gamboling is overrated.
 
Doug, what an awful signature line! Makes me want to cry...

Back to the subject, there are parchments and parchments; if hatter would like to post or e-mail photo I'd be happy to offer a tentative opinion as to how easy or hard it would be to flatten.
 
Create a Post
Back
Top