Every print is a giclée: pigment ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm, a heavy matte cotton paper, made to order and sent to you unframed. What follows is what I would tell a friend buying one.
Choosing a size
Prints disappoint in one direction only: too small. If you are between two sizes, take the larger.
Over a sofa, a sideboard or a bed, a print looks settled at about two-thirds the width of the furniture beneath it. On a wall of its own, stand where you will usually see it from: across a room of four or five metres, a print needs to be 70 cm wide or more to read; in a hallway you pass at arm’s length, 45 cm is plenty.
Every print page hangs each size it is sold in on the same three-metre wall, over a 180 cm bench, at true scale. Switch between the sizes there and the choice usually makes itself. See the prints.
The paper, and why
Photo Rag is 100% cotton, acid-free and matte, with a soft surface texture. I chose matte for a plain reason: most of my photographs are either very dark or very light, and a glossy print of a dark photograph is a mirror. You see the window behind you before you see the animal.
The honest trade-off is that matte paper cannot reach quite the black of a gloss print. In a frame on a wall it rarely matters, and it means the photograph reads from anywhere in the room.
Framing it locally
The prints come unframed, so you can choose a frame for the room it will live in and have it made by a framer near you. It is also the safer way to send paper across the world. What to ask for:
- A mount in acid-free, conservation-grade board, about 5–8 cm wide on smaller prints and 8–12 cm on larger ones, a little deeper at the bottom than the top. Dark photographs look well in a white or off-white mount; a mount close to the colour of the wall works too.
- Glazing: museum glass (anti-reflective and UV-filtering) for most rooms; UV-filtering acrylic for very large frames, children’s rooms or anywhere glass would be a risk.
- A slim frame, around 15–25 mm across the face, in black or natural wood. These are quiet photographs, and a heavy moulding argues with them.
- How it is fixed: hinged at the top with reversible conservation tape or Japanese tissue, never glued or dry-mounted, and with spacers if you frame it without a mount, so the glazing does not touch the print.
Hanging it
Galleries hang work with its centre about 145–150 cm from the floor, which is roughly eye level, and that is the height the room on each print page uses. Over furniture, keep the bottom of the frame 15–25 cm above it instead. If you are hanging several prints together, treat the group as one picture and centre the group.
Looking after it
Keep it out of direct sunlight, even behind UV glazing, and away from bathrooms and stovetops. Handle an unframed print by its edges with clean, dry hands; cotton paper remembers fingerprints. If it arrives rolled, let it relax face up on a clean table for a day or two before it goes to the framer.
Ordering
Prints are ordered through the form on each print page. I reply to confirm the paper, the total and the delivery time for your country before anything is printed.