From: Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net)
Date: 06/28/03-10:22:46 AM Z
> Subject: Re: Matting and framing Theory
>
> I noticed a few people
> who rigorously observed the old salon rule of matting the print in the
> 'optical center' of the board. I find that this looks ridiculous for
> most prints, however.
Clay,
Not having heard of this before I looked it up, and it's just a formula for
an offset of the print to leave more mat at the bottom than at the top, with
the offset a ratio of print and mat size. It seems overly complicated, but I
don't know why the results would look ridiculous.
I'm happy with a precisely centered mat window when the prints are shown in
a portfolio, held by hand. For some reason though, a centered window *looks*
off-center (low) when framed on the wall. So for prints that will be framed,
I routinely leave a little more mat at the bottom than the top, without the
elaborate ritual for Optical Center Matting, but with the result that the
image seems centered, or at least comfortable. For a 7.5x9.5 window in a
16x20 board I leave half an inch more at the bottom. For 11x19 in 20x28 I
might up it to three-quarters. The mat goes in a dark brown wood frame with
a narrow front face.
I've sometimes seen prints mounted with *much* more white below than above,
and that does look ridiculous to my eye.
---Carl
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