Katubah #1

When my clients came to see me after their wedding, they brought with a Katubah. For those that don't know what this is, it is a wedding contract that is part of all weddings in the Jewish faith. These days, many of those katubahs that we have the priviledge to frame are beautiful, hand-calligraphed works of art unto themselves aside from their true purpose.This katubah had a number of color elements in it, like purple, green and gold leaf that we used to design the ideal mat and frame composition.

For the frame, we selected Larson-Juhl's Musee watergilded moulding L615630, along with the matching fillet to go around the opening between the two mat layers. The fillet used is the L105192 Musee 223 karat gold leafed fillet. A fillet is, usually, a wooden strip, part of which slips underneath the mat next to it, which ends up framing the mat opening, like a frame-within-a-frame. The end result is rich and dramatic and well worth the extra cost.

As regards the term "Watergilded", it refers to a frame that has been covered in very thin sheets of 23 karat gold leaf. Watergilded frames are among the most beautiful frames one can buy, since real gold never tarnishes and the leafing is nearly transparent, allowing the under-colors to come through a bit. The gold leaf looks outstanding next to the rich, olive-green suede mat we selected. Water-gilded frames cost more than plain "gold-colored" metal leafing, but you truly do get what you pay for in the end.

The upper mat is Crescent 7190 Moorman Olive Suede and the bottom mat is Crescent 1661 Majestic Purple. We put an overall mat width of 3 1/4" on the composition, with the finished mat size being 22 1/4 x 25 1/2". The purple mat only shows 1/4". Fillets work really well when you can sandwich them between two or 3 mat layers.We do this, partly, because of the archival nature of framing important paper documents, balanced against the fact that fillets are wood and contain an acid-bearing structure called Lignin, which can degrade the artwork if it comes in direct contact with it. We always use acid free matting when it comes in contact with paper art.

The glass we used is the True-Vue Museum Glass. This glass is an optically coated, U/V filtering clear glass that looks nearly invisible and protects the art from 99% of UV A & B rays. The clarity of the glass helps to let the viewer see all the color and detail, whether it be in highly lit areas or dim, low light rooms.

Designed and executed by Brian Flax, CPF

Images shown by kind permission of our client, KS.