Picture Framing Terms and Techniques

Bare Wood Mouldings
The beauty of natural wood is timeless. It can be left raw, simply waxed or hand-finished with paint, stain or leaf, bare woods are perfect for creative bespoke framing. They are available in Pine, Oak, Ash, Beech, Koto and Obeche and can vary in both grain and colour.

White Mouldings
These come in many finishes from smooth to grainy and matt to glossy.

Black Mouldings
Functional and stylish, these mouldings come in many finishes from smooth to grainy and matt to glossy. Traditionally used for framing black and white photography, sketches and ink drawings they are also used for formal pieces such as certificates or framing notices.

Polcore Mouldings
A high quality expanded polystyrene core moulding. Polcore mouldings have a constant, clean finish and are easy to cut and join.

Limed Wood Mouldings
Plain barefaced wood is treated with lime wax to achieve a distressed look.

Fillet Mouldings
Fillets are fine, decorative mouldings with a raised sight edge and flat lip behind. They sit inside the aperture of a mount providing a decorative lining and increasing the depth that artwork is held away from the glass.

Aluminium Mouldings
Ideal for a wide variety of framing applications and styles. Offering stylish, versatile finishes and unique profiles that can be used in combination for float mounting and object framing.

Plain Wood Mouldings
Plain Wood mouldings vary both in grain and colour, they can be stained, waxed or painted to any colour. They are available in Pine, Oak, Ash, Beech, Koto and Obeche.

Wood Veneer Mouldings
Wood Veneer Mouldings offer a variety of natural wood tones on simple profiles to match your furniture. You can choose from a raw, unfinished veneer, gloss or a lime wash finish.

Natural Wood Mouldings
Versatile mouldings you can use for their natural finish with a protective application of wax, varnish, wood stains or acrylic paints before finishing with a wax, liming wax or gilt cream.

Deep Rebate Mouldings
Deep rebate mouldings are used to frame collectibles, physical objects, canvases on stretchers and highly textured artwork. They can also offer greater depth if you are simply adding a dramatic effect to the piece. Deep rebate mouldings also work particularly well in combination with some of the larger slips, creating expensive looking contemporary frames.

Decorative Wood Mouldings
Traditional and contemporary wood mouldings to decorate your home.

Silver Mouldings
They combine a sense of luxury with the clean, vibrancy that suits today’s modern décor. It is often this style of frame seen in shops selling wide ranges of framed prints, which means that it is very often the style that springs to a customer’s mind in the first instance.

Gold Mouldings
This range of mouldings offer a sense of style, quality and luxury to your work and remain very popular with clients. Our gold mouldings have been selected for their quality and robustness, as, normally, gold leaf mouldings tend to mark easily if not handled carefully.

Slip Mouldings
Usually a flat piece of wood or plastic with no rebate, that slip under the rebate lip of the main picture frame to offer a decorative edge and can extend the inner edge of a frame behind which the mounted artwork or canvas block sits.

Coloured Mouldings
Dynamic and stylish, there is a large variety of colours, shades and finishes to choose from.

Tray Frame Mouldings
Tray frame mouldings are used to create a special type of surround for stretched canvases. The stretchers literally sit in a tray created by this type of profile, offering a fine band of moulding visible front on, the sides of the canvas are hidden behind the walls of the frame. The overall look is of a beautiful, clean-cut block. As well as these pre-finished mouldings, there is also a natural wood version, which can be coloured to your own design.

Compo Mouldings
Compo is a handmade restoration product, created using a traditional recipe refined by an experienced restorer and gilder. It is suitable for use on mirror and picture frames or other decorative mouldings, Compo is used for repairing or replacing missing decoration simply heat the compo and hand model or carve to match the contours of the moulding or press into a mould.

Vacuum Coating
Aluminium powder is “evaporated” or “sputtered” onto the exposed surface of the glass in a vacuum chamber.

Aluminium Glass Mirrors
A float glass manufactured using a vacuum coating, which is then coated with 2+ layers of waterproof protective paint.

Low Aluminium Glass Mirrors
A silver coating with 2 layers of protective paint on the back surface of glass. A clear, light transmissive, smooth mirror that represents natural colours with precision.

Safety Backed Silver Float Mirrors
A special protective film is stuck to the back of a silver glass mirror. The film helps contain the glass in case the mirror is broken.

Decorative Glass Mirrors
Using inorganic colour ink, mirror glass is printed on with a special silkscreen. Durable and more moisture resistant than ordinary printed glass and can serve for over 20 years.

Silver Float Glass Mirrors
A standard float mirror with a silver, copper film coating and 2+ layers of waterproof paint. It resists acid and moisture and provides clear, actual images.

Acid Neutral
As no form of paper based product can strictly be termed ‘acid-free’, most are treated to reduce or ‘neutralise’ the lignin acid within the materials to have a pH balance of 7.0 or higher.

Perfect Mount
An acid neutral, light tack board.

Lignin Acid
A natural occurring bonding element in plants that holds the wood fibre together. While lignin is not acidic, it does give off acids as it deteriorates.

White Core
High quality, white core mount board made of bleached white fibre wood pulp, buffered with calcium carbonate to slow the damage caused by acid and lignins. The board is PH neutral and meets Fine Art Trades Guild standards for commended and budget level framing.

Newton Rings
The glass and image glue over time, similar to the bruising you get when you press an LCD screen.

Metallic Mount
Surface Paper: Not acid-neutral.
Core: White
The Adhesive: Aqueous PVA with neutral pH; buffered with calcium carbonate; is plasticiser free.
Backing Paper: Made from chemically-treated pulp using high pH sizing and lignin free; buffered with calcium carbonate; the water-soluble extracts are minimal.

Calcium Carbonate
Provides extra defense to guard against contamination by air-borne acid for the life of the board.

Suedette Mount
The Surface Paper: Natural high light fast rayon
Core: White
The Adhesive: Aqueous PVA with neutral pH; buffered with calcium carbonate*; is plasticiser-free.
The Backing Paper: Made from chemically-treated pulp using high pH sizing and lignin free; buffered with calcium carbonate; the water-soluble extracts are minimal.

Black Core
A high quality, black-core mount board made of wood pulp, buffered with calcium carbonate to slow the damage caused by acid and lignins. The board is PH neutral and meets Fine Art Trades Guild standards for commended and budget level framing.

Styrene Glass
Softer and thinner than Acrylic glass, it is a lightweight glass and has shatter resistant properties.

4.4mm Laminated Float Glass
The glass has a lamination layer that helps armour the glass, it provides 99% UV protection.

2mm Float Glass
Standard glass for picture framing, stronger than store-bought picture frame glass.

Acrylic Glass
Lightweight, hard wearing with shatter resistant properties. It is available in different thickness’s and comes in variants of diffusion, UV blocking and scratch resistance.

Museum Glass
1% reflection rate, 98% UV block and has anti-reflective properties.

Water White Glass
A low iron glass with 1% reflection rate, making the glass appear almost invisible.

1% Reflection Rate
It allows 99% of light in and out of the frame making the glass look invisible. Not ideal for glossy images as the light will reflect off of the image, not the glass.

UV Protection Glass
UV protection glass blocks out 98% of UV from deteriorating your image over time.

Diffusion Glass
Traditional non reflective glass is acid-etched on one side to diffuses the light on the way out, therefore reducing the glare in a high light environment.

The etching of the glass slightly reduces the visible detail and is not recommended for deeper set frames as the effect is strengthened.

Nirogard
An anti-reflective, completely transparent glass. Minimises reflections to less than 1%.

FSC
The Forest Stewardship Council is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of the world’s forests.

FSC runs a global forest certification system with two key components: Forest Management and Chain of Custody certification. This system allows consumers to identify, purchase and use timber and forest products produced from well-managed forests.

Five Levels of Framing
The Fine Art Trade Guild’s Five Levels of Framing extend from Museum Level for preservation of the most valuable items, to a basic Budget Level for framing items such as posters. The framing levels were designed to help framers advise customers on the most appropriate methods and materials for framing and mounting their art and memorabilia.

Fine Art Trade Guild
Sets the standards and guidelines for picture framing by setting the training standard and ensuring a code of ethics is followed by framers to conduct their businesses with honour.

Guild Commended Framer
By passing exams to become a Guild Commended Framer (GCF), the framer demonstrates their knowledge and skills are of the highest standard.

Conservation Grade Mount Card
Pre-treated to neutralise the majority of lignin acid. The high white core will stay white for the life of the board. It has an acid neutral backing paper to FATG conservation standard.

Cotton Museum Mount Card
Museum grade mount card is suitable for items of a highly sensitive nature, and is made up of a truly acid free 100% virgin cotton fibre core. Cotton does not have the acid producing lignin found in wood based products.