Mitre & Mat · Liberty, Missouri
The glass is the decision. Everything else is taste.
It is the only line on a framing quote that changes what the piece looks like in twenty years, and it is the one nobody arrives knowing anything about.
Three sheets sit under the bench. They look identical leaning against a wall and they are not. The difference is a coating you cannot see and a light you cannot see either, and the honest way to explain it is what each one stops.
| Stops UV | Reflection | On a 16 × 20 | Use it for | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | None | Full. You will see the window in it. | Included | Prints you can reprint. Kids' work you expect to swap out next year. Anything going in a dark hallway. |
| Conservation | About 99% | Full, same as standard | + $55 | Photographs, watercolours, anything on paper, anything signed in ink. This is the one most jobs should have and most jobs do not. |
| Museum | About 99% | Almost none. People try to touch the art. | + $180 | Dark images, glossy photographs, anything hanging opposite a window, and anything where the piece matters more than the price does. |
What fading actually is
Paper does not fade evenly. A red goes first, then a yellow, and the last thing to go is the black, so a colour photograph left in daylight ends up looking like a blue photograph before anyone notices it is going. By then it is not recoverable. Conservation glass is not insurance against a bad wall, it is the reason the piece is still the same colour when it comes off that wall.
Reflection is a room problem, not a glass problem
Before paying for museum glass, stand where you will actually stand to look at it. If the light source is behind you and low, standard glass is fine and you have just saved a hundred and eighty dollars. If the piece is going on the wall opposite a window, no frame will fix that and the glass is the only lever you have.
Three we will talk you out of
- Museum glass on a poster you paid twelve dollars for. The glass will cost fifteen times the art. Put the money in the moulding instead, where you will see it every day.
- Any glass at all over an oil on canvas. Oil needs air. Float it, leave it open, and dust it twice a year with a dry brush.
- Standard glass over anything with a signature. This is the one we push back on hardest. A signature is ink on paper and ink on paper is the first thing daylight takes.
Acrylic, and when it is the right answer
Anything over about 32 by 40 gets heavy enough in glass that the hanging becomes the problem rather than the framing. Same for a stairwell, a child's room, or anything going in a car for four hours. Acrylic is lighter, does not shatter, and scratches if you look at it wrong, so it is a trade and we will say which side of it you are on.
Not sure which one? Bring the piece and tell us which wall.
The glass choice takes about ninety seconds to settle once we know the room. It is not worth losing sleep over, and it is worth getting right once.
- Where
- 123 Main St, Liberty, Missouri
- Open
- Wed 11–4 · Thu 11–5:30
Fri 11–4 · Sat 10–2