The mount is the card window around a print, a drawing or a photograph. Most people notice only its colour. What matters more is what it is made of.
What a poor mount does
Ordinary card is made from wood pulp and is slightly acid. Over ten or twenty years the acid moves into the paper it touches and leaves a brown line around the picture, just inside the window. It cannot be washed out.
What we use
Every mount in our workshop is cotton museum board, free of acid and lignin. It costs a little more and it will not stain. The picture is held behind it with paper hinges and wheat-starch paste, so it can be taken out again without harm.
How wide
Wider than you think. A mount of 6 to 8 cm gives a small print room to breathe; at the bottom we make it a centimetre wider than at the top, which the eye reads as even.
Glass
Museum glass cuts almost all of the ultraviolet light that fades watercolours and photographs, and reflects so little that it seems to disappear. For anything precious, it is worth it.
