Displaying Old Maps and Prints at Home

Why Old Maps and Prints Need Tender Care

There is something deeply satisfying about hanging a framed county map of Devon above a hallway console, or a hand-coloured engraving of a Georgian terrace beside the fireplace. Old maps and prints carry a particular kind of history, and they do so on materials that were never designed to last two hundred years in a centrally heated house.

Antique paper is acidic by nature. It was made from rag or wood pulp, sized with alum, and often coloured with pigments that fade at the first hint of strong daylight. Add modern central heating, which dries the air and makes paper cockle, and you have a recipe for foxing, brittleness and lost detail. The good news is that with a few sensible choices at the framer's and a little care about where you hang things, you can enjoy your collection for decades without harming it.

Start with a Conservation Mount

The mount is doing far more work than most people realise. It holds the artwork away from the glass, allows air to circulate, and provides a buffer against humidity swings. For anything you value, ask for a conservation or museum-grade mount board that is acid-free and lignin-free, ideally to the standard that framers call "conservation grade" or better.

Insist on the following wherever possible:

• 100% cotton rag or purified alpha-cellulose board, pH neutral and buffered with calcium carbonate.
• Japanese paper hinges attached with wheat starch paste, not self-adhesive tape. Gummed linen tape and masking tape are the enemies of antique paper; they stain, cockle and eventually fail.
• An undermount of the same quality, so the reverse of the print is protected too.
• No dry mounting, no trimming, no trimming of margins. Those wide original margins tell you about the plate mark and the edition, and once cut they never come back.

If a print is very large or heavily cockled, a framer may suggest a "float" mount, where the piece sits on top of the board with its edges visible. This looks handsome and shows off the plate mark, but it exposes more paper to light and air, so weigh the aesthetics against the risk.

Choosing Glass That Filters UV Light

Daylight is the single greatest threat to an old print. Ultraviolet radiation attacks the lignin in paper and bleaches the organic pigments used in hand-colouring, particularly reds, yellows and greens. Ordinary float glass offers almost no protection.

Specify UV-filtering glazing. There are two main families: laminated glass with a UV-inhibiting interlayer, and acrylic sheets such as those sold as UV-filtering perspex. Both block roughly 97 to 99 per cent of UV radiation. Acrylic is lighter and safer for large pieces, though it scratches more easily and carries a static charge that can attract pastel dust, so it is less suited to chalk or charcoal drawings.

Be realistic about what glazing can do. UV filtering slows fading dramatically but does not stop it, because visible light also degrades colour. The only reliable long-term protection is to keep the framed piece out of direct sun.

Lighting: Bright Enough to Read, Kind Enough to Keep

You want to see the engraving's fine lines, the soft stippling of an aquatint, the faint wash of a county's coastline. That calls for light that is even and warm rather than fierce and focused.

Where to hang and how to light:

• Avoid south-facing walls and windows without blinds. A north-facing interior wall is ideal.
• Use picture lights sparingly. Traditional incandescent picture lights throw heat directly onto the glass and paper. Choose LED fittings rated at around 3000K and fit a dimmer.
• Aim for around 50 lux on the surface for sensitive works, and never more than 200 lux for long periods. Think of the sort of light you would want for reading in a library, not a gallery spotlight.
• Keep fittings at least 30cm from the frame so heat dissipates, and angle them slightly downward to reduce glare on the glass.
• Fit blinds or UV film to nearby windows, and draw them during the brightest hours of a summer afternoon.

Hanging, Humidity and the English Climate

Old houses breathe, and so should your prints. Avoid hanging anything valuable above a radiator, a working fireplace or an Aga, where hot, dry air will cause paper to shrink and cockle. Kitchens and bathrooms are out; the steam and grease are relentless.

Aim for a stable relative humidity between 40 and 55 per cent. In a draughty Georgian house this may be impossible without a dehumidifier, but you can at least avoid sudden changes: do not move a print from a cold attic to a warm drawing room in one step, and never hang a framed map against an external wall that suffers from damp or condensation.

Check the backs of frames once a year. If you see rust spots, insect frass or silverfish damage, take the piece to a conservator. Silverfish adore the starch paste in old paper and can ruin a map quietly over a single winter.

The Pleasure of Getting It Right

Done properly, displaying old maps and prints is not an exercise in restriction. It is a way of letting them live in your home rather than hiding in a drawer. Hang them where you actually sit and read, in rooms with soft, controllable light, and let the patina of the paper do its work.

A conservation mount, UV-filtering glazing, a considerate hanging spot and gentle lighting cost a little more at the outset. But they mean that the county map you love today will still show its delicate coastline, its faint hachures and its hand-coloured borders to whoever inherits it next.