What you have: media, condition and what each piece needs
A framing decision is a decision about one object. This chapter works out what each object is made of, how much light it can take, what condition it is in, and which pieces belong to a conservator rather than a framer.
Start here Essentials
At minimum this chapter asks you to look at each piece once, write one line about it, and separate the few that need a conservator. Everything marked Go deeper is optional on a first pass.
- Photograph each piece and its back before you move it. Phone light is fine. The back carries more information than the front (Reading the condition).
- Write one line per piece in the picture list. Say what it is made of and whether you could replace it (Your pictures).
- Open the media table and read only the rows that match. Each row says what harms that medium and what glazing and mounting it wants (Media and what each needs).
- Set aside anything with tape, a stain, flaking, or art stuck to the glass. Leave those frames shut (Reading the condition).
Minimum time: about 20 minutes for one piece, an afternoon for a houseful. Done when: every piece has a row in the picture list with a medium and a replaceability answer, and the pieces that need a conservator are in a group of their own.
1. Telling them apart Understand
Almost every later decision in this manual turns on one question: what is this thing made of? Board grade, glazing, the attachment, the wall it can hang on and how long it can hang there all follow from the answer. The answer is usually gettable by eye, at a window, with no equipment.
Hold the piece flat and look across its surface rather than straight down at it, with a window to one side. Light raking across a sheet at a shallow angle shows texture that vanishes in flat light: the bite of an intaglio plate, the tooth of watercolor paper, the ridges of real brushwork, the pattern of ink dots in a reproduction. Then look straight down with a loupe or a phone camera at full zoom.
| What you are holding | How it shows itself | Why it matters later |
|---|---|---|
| Photographic print, traditionally processed | Continuous tone with no dot pattern at full zoom; a surface sheen that can be glossy, pearl or matte; fiber-based paper has a slight natural curl, resin-coated paper lies flat and feels plastic | Wants board that has passed a specific test; one group of publishers asks for unbuffered board for photographic materials |
| Inkjet print | At full zoom, fine sprayed dots or a grain that is not a regular grid; often on heavy matte or luster paper; a modern print made at home or at a lab is usually this | Treated as very light-sensitive by a national library; water and abrasion are real risks |
| Offset or screen reproduction | A regular rosette or dot grid under a loupe; perfectly even ink film; the thing a poster usually is | Replaceable in most cases, which changes the whole package |
| Original watercolor or drawing | Paper with visible tooth and sometimes a deckle edge; pigment sits in the paper rather than on it; pencil shows direction and pressure | Light sensitive, and the sheet moves with humidity, so it has to be free to move at its hinges |
| Pastel, charcoal, chalk, soft pencil | Powder sits on the surface; a fingertip near it picks up color; raking light shows loose particles | This is friable media, and it must be held well off the glazing. It is also the one case where publishers disagree about glass and acrylic |
| Intaglio print (etching, engraving) | A plate mark pressed into the paper around the image; ink that stands slightly proud of the sheet | Usually matted with the plate mark showing, which changes the window size |
| Painting on stretched canvas | Fabric over wooden bars; press gently at the back and it gives; wedges in the corners | Different rules entirely: clearance in the rabbet, a backing board, usually no glazing |
| Canvas board or panel | Rigid; canvas texture glued to card or board | Framed like a panel, not like a stretched canvas |
| Textile or needlework | Thread, weave, sometimes three-dimensional stitching | Stitched to a covered support, never adhered, and spacers keep glazing off the surface |
| Document or certificate | Printed or written paper, often with a seal or a signature in ink | Buffered board is usually the answer here where it is not for photographs |
Two distinctions are worth more than the rest. The first is original against reproduction, because it decides replaceability rather than value. Under a loupe, a reproduction of a watercolor shows the printing process; the original shows pigment and paper. The second is friable against bound. A friable medium is one whose particles are only loosely held to the support: pastel, charcoal, chalk, soft graphite, and some gouache that has cracked. Test it Tilt the sheet in raking light and look for loose powder in the paper's low points. If you see it, that piece joins its own group and stays there until Glazing.
If you cannot settle it. Write "not identified" in the picture list and treat the piece as the more sensitive of the candidates it could be. An uncertain identification is a reason to choose the more protective option, not the cheaper one. A framer or a paper conservator will usually tell you what something is in thirty seconds, and that is a reasonable thing to ask for.
2. How much light each one can take
Every medium has a published light sensitivity, and the figures are not close to each other. They are worth meeting now, because they are the reason Where it can hang exists.
A national library sorts collection material into three bands. Convention Its extremely light sensitive band is not to be displayed at all, and includes certain early and experimental photographs and color transparencies. Its very light sensitive band is to be shown at a maximum of 3 footcandles and only while being looked at, for no more than three to five months, followed by a minimum of three years of dark storage; that band includes watercolors, pastels, colored pencil, ballpoint and felt-tip ink, all color photographic processes and all digital photographic prints including inkjet. Its moderately light sensitive band allows 5 to 10 footcandles for six to nine months, then two years dark, and covers good-quality paper, prints in carbon or earth pigments, and most silver-based photographic processes in good condition.
The sharpest disagreement in the research is about black-and-white photographs. A federal leaflet gives 50 to 100 lux for most photographs on exhibit. A conservation institute's note on black-and-white prints says there is no published evidence that light alone causes black-and-white photographic images to fade, that well-processed silver gelatin prints on fiber-base paper are essentially stable to light, and that they may be displayed for several weeks or a few months at roughly 800 lux, plus or minus 200. The same note then excludes salted paper prints, albumen prints and contemporary resin-coated papers, for which it reports recommended levels varying from 5 lux to 100 lux.
Both are published, both are current, and the difference is about which photographs each one is describing. The document that would settle it is a professional group's exhibition guidelines for photographic materials, and in this research the wiki page that would carry them is dead. So the manual shows both publishers and what each was measuring, and in Media and what each needs the row for black-and-white prints carries the split rather than an average.
This chapter identifies and records. It does not value anything, authenticate anything or treat anything. If the medium will not settle, that is a question for a framer or a paper conservator, not a reason to guess. And a light figure is a recommendation published for institutional collections on exhibition: it tells you what a wall costs, not what your picture has already suffered.
3. Reading the condition, mostly from the back
The back of an old frame is where the evidence is, and most of it can be read without opening anything. Turn the piece face down on a clean towel, and look.
The dust cover. Brown kraft paper, torn or not; a framer's label with a date; sometimes a price or a shop name. Labels are worth keeping. The trade specification asks that existing labels be preserved, because they can provide provenance, and a conservation institute says the same about a painting's frame, which may carry labels, inscriptions and stamps that are part of the work's history.
The backing board. If you can see its edge, you can usually tell corrugated kraft cardboard from rag board: the kraft is brown through its thickness and the corrugations show. Corrugated cardboard, hardboard such as Masonite, raw wood and colored papers over a groundwood core are the four materials every conservation publisher in this research names as unsuitable in contact with a work.
The fixing. Nails hammered into the side of the frame, diamond points, screw eyes. A professional wiki files all three under historical techniques, noting that screw eyes are rarely well secured into the wood, that diamond points come loose easily and are often not long enough, and that driving nails with the artwork in the frame risks jarring the frame and the work.
Then turn it over and look through the glass at the piece itself. These are the signs that mean stop:
| What you see | What it usually is | Who handles it |
|---|---|---|
| A brown or yellow line on the paper exactly where the mat window sat | Discoloration from an acidic window mat. A federal leaflet calls it acid mat burn and names its cause: a sandwich of colored papers over a groundwood core | A paper conservator. Reframing stops it getting worse; it does not remove it |
| Scattered rust-brown spots | Foxing. A federal leaflet on mold lists foxing among the marks mold leaves on paper prints and drawings | A paper conservator |
| Tape, anywhere on the piece | Pressure-sensitive or gummed tape, which every publisher here rules out against the object | A paper conservator. Removing tape is a treatment, and the first attempt is usually the one that cannot be undone |
| The image stuck to the inside of the glass | Moisture has reached the package and the surface has adhered. A conservation institute warns that the inside of glass is subject to condensation | A conservator. Do not pull |
| Flaking or powdering media | Loose paint or friable media coming away | A conservator. Keep it flat and face up |
| Rippling, cockling or a wave in the sheet | Paper responding to humidity, often held at its edges so it cannot move | Sometimes a reframing question, sometimes a conservator's |
| A musty smell at the back | Mold, active or dormant. Killing mold does not remove the health hazard, and dormant mold reactivates when conditions return | A conservator, with the piece isolated meanwhile |
If none of those appear, opening the frame is a reasonable thing to do, and a conservation institute publishes a procedure for removing paper artifacts from their frames. If any of them appear, the most useful thing you can do is photograph what you can see, write it in the condition sheet, and stop. Ask the authority
Buffered or unbuffered, raised here and answered later. Looking at a photograph's old mount often raises this question early. Buffered board carries an alkaline reserve, usually calcium carbonate, that neutralizes acids as they form; unbuffered board is at neutral pH with no reserve. A federal leaflet states the split as a rule: neutral, lignin-free board for photographs, and buffered or alkaline-reserve material at pH 8 to 8.5 for paper documents. A professional wiki recommends unbuffered board with all photographic materials, and says unbuffered material is required for cyanotype and dye transfer images. A conservation center says that in most cases buffered board at 3.5 percent calcium carbonate is beneficial, with neutral board for alkaline-sensitive processes such as cyanotypes. Those three do not agree, and Board grades sets them side by side.
The loupe tests worth knowing. A ten-power loupe costs little and settles three things quickly. A regular dot rosette means a printing process rather than an original. Continuous tone with a visible paper fiber structure at the edges usually means a photographic print. Pigment sitting in the hollows of the paper's tooth, with the high points showing through, usually means watercolor. None of these is proof, and none of them is an authentication.
4. Replaceability, and the answer nobody expects
Replaceability drives every later decision more than value does, and it is a question you can answer yourself. Three honest answers cover most households: I could get another one, I could not, but it is not worth money, and I do not know, and it might be. Write whichever is true, with a sentence saying how you would replace it, because that sentence is what makes the first answer real. "The maker still sells it" is a replaceability answer. "It is only a print" is not.
Then the answer most people have not heard. A national library's framing guidance says long-term or permanent display of paper-based material is not recommended, and that the preferred alternative is to store the original well and frame a well-made reproduction. The national archives says the same thing to households in plainer words: the best protection from light is to display copies and keep the originals in a box, and color scans or color photocopies can make good copies for display. A conservation institute's note on storing works on paper takes the same line from the other direction.
That is not a counsel of despair, and it is not an instruction. It is the option that almost nobody is offered at a framing counter: for the piece you would be most upset to lose, framing a good copy and keeping the original flat and dark is the thing the conservation literature actually recommends. Storing covers how to keep the original; Where it can hang gives you the figures to decide with.
Go deeper 5. What an appraisal is
This manual does not value anything, and nothing in it is a valuation. It is worth knowing what the separate trade looks like, because "possibly valuable" is a common answer and it has somewhere to go.
An appraisal of personal property is a written opinion of value prepared to a published practice standard. Two membership bodies could be read in this research. The International Society of Appraisers describes itself as a not-for-profit formed to advance education in personal property appraising, runs a credentialing program, and publishes a searchable directory. The American Society of Appraisers describes itself as the oldest multi-discipline non-profit international organization of professional appraisers, and divides its credentials into six disciplines, of which Personal Property is the one that covers art. A third body, the Appraisers Association of America, could not be read: its site is held behind a security challenge that neither a script nor a browser could clear on 2026-11-03, so nothing about it is stated here.
Two words worth having before you call anyone. Fair market value is what a thing realizes at auction. Retail replacement value is what it would cost to replace at retail, and it is the value insurance uses; a professional body's guide notes that replacement value can be as much as 100 percent above fair market value. The same guide says periodic appraisals by appraisers who follow the published practice standard are strongly recommended and may be required by some insurers above a value threshold. Recording covers the record an appraiser or an insurer would want from you.
6. See it See it
Hal Brewer's watercolor. Hal has his grandmother's watercolor, 11 by 14 inches, signed, in a frame assembled some time in the 1960s. He turns it over on a towel. Known: the dust cover is torn, the backing is brown corrugated cardboard, and there is cloth tape across the top edge of the sheet where it meets the mat. Through the glass he can see a brown line on the paper exactly where the window sits. Assumed: that the sheet is a watercolor rather than a reproduction, which the paper's tooth and the pigment sitting in it suggest but do not prove. Open: whether the tape has stained through, which only a conservator can see; whether it is worth money, which only an appraiser can say; and what the new package should be, which the framer settles with him after the conservator. Hal photographs the front, the back, the label and the brown line, writes five lines in the condition sheet, and puts the frame back down. He has not opened it, and that is the correct result for this piece.
- What's Behind Your Frame?, a preservation center's two-page guide: the materials to look for behind an existing frame, and the four questions to ask a framer. It is the closest thing in this research to a household-facing checklist.
- Displaying Family Papers and Photographs, the national archives, reviewed July 2025: a federal agency writing directly to a household, including its own photograph of two drawings where the marker faded except where one covered the other.
- Limiting Light Damage, a national library: the three sensitivity bands, with lists of which media fall in each. Read the lists rather than the numbers on a first pass.
- Caring for Photographs: General Guidelines, a federal leaflet: short, blunt, and the source of the 50 to 100 lux figure for photographs.
7. Practice Practice
Minimum: one piece, photographed front and back, with one line written about it. Time: about 45 minutes for five pieces. Materials: a phone, a clean towel or a clean sheet, a soft pencil, a window with daylight, and a loupe if you have one.
- Set up once. Clear a table near a window, lay the towel down, turn the room lamps off. Daylight from one side is what makes raking light possible.
- Photograph each piece four ways. The whole front square on, the whole back square on, any label or inscription close up, and one raking shot taken from the side with the light across the surface. Number the backs in pencil, lightly, near an edge, as you go.
- Name the medium from the table above. Use a loupe if the dots are the question. Write "not identified" where you cannot settle it; that is a result, not a failure.
- Write the row in Your pictures. What it is, the medium, the sheet size if you have it, replaceability, where it is now.
- Write a condition line for anything old (Go deeper; optional). One sentence on what you see on the front, one on the back, and the flag if any of the stop signs are there (the condition sheet).
8. Your pictures Your pictures
9. Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Every piece has a photograph of its front and its back, kept somewhere other than the frame.
- Every piece has a medium written down, or the words "not identified" and a note of what it might be.
- Every piece has a replaceability answer, and the replaceable ones have a sentence saying how.
- Anything with tape, a stain, flaking, mold or art stuck to the glass is in its own group, unopened.
- Nothing has been opened, cleaned, flattened or unstuck.
Worked example
Nia and Marcus Okonkwo (fictional) have fourteen photographs printed between 1978 and last year. They photograph the backs first and find that three carry no lab stamp and no negative number, and that those three are the only prints of their kind. Their rows read: eleven photograph, replaceable, reprintable from the file; three photograph, irreplaceable, no negative. One of the three is on resin-coated paper, which they can tell because it lies flat and the edge feels plastic, so it goes in the more sensitive band. Nothing needed a conservator. The whole pass took an evening, and the three rows that matter are now visibly different from the eleven that do not.
Common mistakes
- Starting with the frame. The frame is the last decision, not the first. Until you know what is inside it, nothing about the frame can be decided.
- Opening an old frame to see what is in there. Opening is a decision with consequences, and a conservation institute publishes a procedure for it precisely because it is not trivial. If the piece shows any of the stop signs, do not.
- Writing "old" or "valuable" in the medium column. Age is not a medium and value is not a medium. The column answers what it is made of.
- Treating "I do not know" as a gap to fill in later. It is a usable answer that routes the piece to the more protective option. Write it.
- Photographing the front only. The back holds the labels, the backing material, the fixings and most of the evidence.
What is still unresolved
- Which board grade each piece calls for, and whether buffered or unbuffered: Mats and What "archival" means.
- Whether glass or acrylic suits the friable pieces: Glazing.
- How much light each one can take on your actual wall, in numbers: Where it can hang.
- What anything is worth: an appraiser, not this manual.