Diminutive passe-partout
A new style of work for the new year
I’ve imagined making these diminutive little pieces for a few years; and with an ever growing stash of rescued glass panes it was becoming necessary to begin making these ‘passpartout’ or ‘passe-partout’ plates.
The term has a variety of meanings but I know it as ‘a picture or photograph mounted between a piece of glass and a sheet of card (or two pieces of glass) stuck together at the edges with adhesive tape’
I always keep an eye out for vintage examples of this small bound edge style of picture; they tend to be quite unassuming pieces, individually delightful and charming small additions to an interior scheme but they’re quite rare finds so I decided I ought to create my own.
I particularly like to hang these in columns alongside door or window frames, or any narrow vertical wall spaces, sometimes filling space between larger pictures in a tightly hung scheme.
The reason I have a stack of old glass panes is because for some years I’ve been reusing vintage frames for my larger painted pieces but they’re textural paintings so best without the glass. I’m not one to let anything go to waste though so my hoard has been slowly building.
Once again I find myself creating work beginning with the frame rather than finishing with it - they’re intrinsic to all my pieces (see my earlier post on my larger works entitled Holding Art for the background on this)
These new pieces are inspired by the layers of pattern and domestic decoration that surround us - stitching, weaving, repeat prints of textiles, wallpapers and book end papers, samples, scraps and fragments; these pieces particularly derive from the design process - the hurriedly sketched ideas, the plans and samples that come before, and are the background to, the patterns that surround our domestic lives.
They’re all individually numbered one offs. A growing collection of these passpartout pieces is available now on the shop page of the Ridge & Furrow website alongside my larger pieces.
I don’t know if it was the right tape! It just looked very similar to what was then called insulation tape, now it’s moved on and is of course made of plastic. It’s always been at the back of my mind to frame up my huge collection of printed tissue paper used to wrap citrus fruit in that way.
Thanks for this, lovely images. To think there’s really an exciting name for that way of framing. I remember there being some pictures framed in this way, deserted out in the workshop and thinking how amazing fabric electrical insulation tape could be put to such good use. Akin to pink elastplast, so elegant in squid ink black.