Mounting Burlap-Backed Papyrus

A Large Burlap-backed Egyptian Papyrus

Late 2024, a customer brought in a number of papyri (multiple papyrus) to be mounted and framed. Of the lot, 2 of them were burlap backed, which apparently is not a common occurrence. Having not mounted this type of work before, we commenced with deep think time and research. We hit the online professional framing forum but this drew a large blank from a very talented group....so we were on our own.

The set of papyri came in in October of 2024 and the largest one didn't really get started until January 2025. There was also a smaller one which we completed in December of 2024, and the methods that we came up with were also applied in scale to the large one (40" x 74" or so).

After thinking about this extensively, since it had burlap on the back and it was reasonably well affixed to the papyrus, we came up with a method to essentially create single stitches from the underside, going through a mat board, looped around the weave of the papyrus, then back through another hole, then affixed behind. This method turned out to be very robust in its strength and the technique can be adjusted easily by putting the stitches further apart or or closer together. The technique used also needed to be fully (and easily...a relative term) reversible.

To start with, I cut a 40" x 60" mat board to about 1/2" shorter than the papyrus, as I wanted the stiches to be hidden behind actual papyrus. Then I want and plotted where I wanted each of the stitches to be placed and overlayed it with some tissue and again marked the same placements. The tissue was very important and this was then laid down on the papyrus (upside down) and put a 12" upholstery thread through the back of the weave of the burlap at those location.

Creating the tissue template for locations on the burlap

Threads through the papyrus

The next step would be to use an awl and poke holes in the mat board at which each of the thread ends would be put through. Due to the size, we had to lift the board over the burlap and then using a wire jig, fished the threads through the holes.

"Fishing" the threads through the backing holes

All the threads are in place and ready to be tied off

Once all the threads are through, then the board is laid down over the papyrus and the thread are carefully pulled, being careful not to pull too tightly as to damage the artwork.

Just a side note here: It turns out my gap of stitches at the lower end would be a later problem which had to be addressed. Since this was going to have acrylic glazing, the static of the acrylic was so strong, it caused lifting at the bottom edge and later had to add additional stitches which was much more time consuming to do after the fact. So...make sure if you are using acrylic, that you have full coverage of the entire surface.

To tie down each of the threads, we ended up cutting a bunch of segments from a strap hanger as I was concerned that the upholstery thread might cut into the mat board...probably overkill, but it actually had a side benefit allowing me a nice location to tie the string down to. First we would use CA glue and attach the strap hanger segment to the mat board, then tie off the thread and again use CA glue at the knot.

we intentionally only used a half knot with a dab of CA glue as if something were to get compromised, we wanted the knot to fail and not the burlap.

Strap hanger segment used to tie off each of the threads

All the threads tied off

After everything was tied down, we glued a layer of mat boards between the open areas. This was to allow the mat board to raise above the height of the strap hangers and later affix the backed papyrus to the presentation mat board. We just used PVA glue for this function.

Additional mat board to raise surface above the strap hangers.

The glue to affix to the final background mat board and would actually go only on these spacer mat board sections. This was then weighted and set overnight to dry.

The mounted papyrus glued to the final background mat board

Once dried, essentially the mounting was completed. We put some mat board strips to protect the underlying background while we worked on the frame and other aspects.

Mounted Burlap-Backed Papyrus

The rest was pretty much normal framing for an oversized frame and wont go into details here.

Later after doing some reading on textile mounting in the PPFA Guidelines for Framing: Textiles and Needlework, We found a similar technique (although not the same) called "couching", but used a single thread which would have been very difficult for this piece.