Idea 11: Virginia Tech Football Jersey Shadowbox

Our client played football at Virginia Tech when he was a student there and his team went on to play in the FedEx Orange Bowl in 2007, where he participated. His jersey is signed by all his teammates, and the overall presentation is very striking. The whole project was designed and executed by our shop manger, Dana Fisher. One of the challenges she had was that there were two documents the client wanted included that he only had on computer disk. We didn't have a color printer to output them on, so we went over to FedEx/Kinko's and had them output in their full color format (black, white and orange) on a heavy, glossy white paper stock.

Another challenge was that the inside size of the shadowbox was 38 x 41 and the matboard Dana wanted to use was not available oversize (anything over 32 x 40"). To make it work, she spliced in two stripes of color that coordinated with the VT colors (B4837 Burgundy Silk by Bainbridge and C9581 Hot Sauce Orange by Crescent). This gave her a matboard large enough to use as a backdrop. The primary background was Artique A4838 Grey Fell (a subtle stone pattern). Splicing is accomplished by cutting underlapping / overlapping bevels between adjacent boards, not just trying to butt them up against each other. That way, you do not see a white line where one board color ends and another starts.

The frame is a pair of stacked mouldings, with Studio Elan Mahogany #242-134 on the outside and Guerrini GI280-CN-BDR Cherry Wood on the inside (the VT colors!). The frame is lined with the grey matboard to create the box strips that hold the TrueVue Conservation Clear U/V filtering glass inplace.

The two documents are mounted on 8 ply rag mat board with an outside bevel cut all around, and the shoulder patch is mounted on a piece of the grey matboard cut as an oval. All three items have a recessed riser underneath to give them the appearance of them floating over the composition.

Designed and executed by Dana Fisher, CPF

Shown by kind permission of A. Bernardi.