Chinese
Calligraphy and Painting Scrolls & Mounting
(Painting will be available in the
future.)
You may use one of the following options to order:
| Dry Mounting | Silk Mounting | Scrolls |
| Supporting - to remove wrinkles & fit in your frames | Silk Margin - to fit in your frames (supporting included) |
Wall Scrolls -
ready to hang (silk margin and supporting included) |
No mats and frames are used and sold from this website.
Various styles of Chinese scrolls and mounting
Most formal and collectible "Chinese calligraphy and painting works" (henceforth, "artworks") are done on Shuan Paper which is mistakenly called "rice paper" in the West. (When Europeans tried to get the trade secrets of this paper in the 18th century, they were misinformed it was made of rice.) Shuan Paper is made of many plant fibers other than rice. It's the best paper that is most compatible with Chinese brushes, ink, and colors for calligraphy and painting. After a Chinese calligrapher or painter has created an artwork on Shuan Paper, inevitably it becomes wrinkled due to its excellent absorbency of water, ink, and color. To help please the eyes and preserve the artwork for centuries, Chinese invented many processes to mount the artworks more than 2,000 years ago. Those processes help to smooth out the wrinkles. A typical Chinese will not put a wrinkled artwork into a frame. Chinese mounting helps to restore the artists’ intent and spirit to a vivid look. Throughout the centuries, the Chinese mounting techniques were kept mostly as family businesses. Secrets were taught only to family members or initiated students, quite similar to martial arts in ancient China. Apprenticeship usually took more than 2 years for students to learn and to obtain experiences and permission to open new galleries.
Since mounting and scroll making are very detail-oriented tasks and can be critically difficult, risky, and painstaking during the processes, many people in China take cameras with their calligraphy or paintings to the galleries before the mounting specialists (mounters, 裝裱師 or 裱畫師 ) start the tasks. The customers keep photo evidences in case the mounting is messed up and both parties have to resort to legal actions. For these reasons, we only mount and make scrolls for Chinese calligraphy and brush painting artworks sold from this website. Joshua Hough and his associate mounter neither sell mounting materials such as paste or silk brocades nor make and repair scrolls for calligraphy and paintings sold elsewhere. If you are in need of mounting materials, you may try 棉宣紙(文明國際) on Facebook or searching on Google.
If you are looking for mounting or scrolls for your own artwork, you may try the following resources:
www.yoursourceinjapan.com/remount.htm
Chinese yellow pages of New York City, Los Angeles, or Houston in the United States or your city. (We do not have any copy of those Chinese phone books.)
The Chinese word for "mounting" means to paste the calligraphy artwork to another piece of paper. It does not necessarily mean being mounted to the wall or into a frame. Please do not get confused with the concept of "mounting" used in American art stores or galleries. They are totally different processes and concepts.
There are basically two realms of mounting Chinese brush arts:
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before dry mounting |
one of the dry mounting processes |
after dry mounting |
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Silk brocades can be then added to the mounted artwork. - Silk Mounting (Silk Margin) |
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The names of the parts of a two-color format scroll:
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In English
One of the preliminary steps of Chinese mounting.
In Chinese:
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Many brands of Shuan Paper are somewhat wrinkled when sold from the manufacturers or bookstores. Sometimes the folded or wrinkled paper needs to be rolled several times and maybe stored for a period of time to be more even and smooth before writing and painting.
If the artwork on Shuan Paper is not preserved by mounting or is not framed, it might get creases, tears, or accelerated aging. When these happens, one needs to do more with the following processes:
Rinse the filth, fill up the crack, and fix the damage.
Showing the true colors by using alum.
Embroidery, inlay on silk, making rough edges smooth, and etc.
A poorly mounted scroll or frame will decrease the value of our collection of a Chinese painting or calligraphy artwork. An inappropriately mounted artwork may require "peeling" and remounting which will cost more or even permanently damage the artwork. Due to the special textures and thin fibers of Shuan Paper, only Chinese framing and mounting experts can handle the artwork done on Shuan Paper. Please don't make assumptions to mount Chinese brush arts on Shuan Paper in a non-Chinese way such as using cement, glue, spray bond, or laminating; otherwise, the soft fibers of Shuan Paper will probably be damaged permanently.
Interested readers may try searching "scroll" from www.chinapage.org/phpBB2/search.php and read what other people say about Chinese scrolls. The cost varies depending on the artwork's size, materials used, and primarily the mounters' level of skills and hours of labor. Since Joshua and his associate mounter, Mr. Stephen Kim, believe in quality and value, we offer 1-color format scrolls as well as 2-color and 3-color format scrolls plus scrolls at your own design, and less expensive services of Dry Mounting and Silk Mounting. Due to the extra piece of paper to be mounted to wrap the Upper and Lower Rods of a scroll, scroll mounting always cost a lot more than Silk Mounting for an equal size of picture core.
The prices of Dry Mounting services offered on this website start from $20. The prices of a custom scroll start from $200. A good quality scroll will require more than 10 hours of labor. The mounting and the custom scroll will help reduce the wrinkles of the artwork and will be good for preservation for centuries. Mr. Kim makes quality silk mounting and handmade scrolls different from most factory-made scrolls. (Scrolls made in a gallery or studio are usually better than those batches made in factories.) Our durable and precisely made scrolls are very delicate and easy to carry. All mounted pieces and scrolls are supervised and inspected by Joshua Hough before shipping.
