It is always so interesting framing items that customers bring to me. In this case, my customer had a jersey and two wooden sticks (hurleys) from the game of hurling, a national sport of Ireland, that he wanted to frame in a shadow box.

My customer had ordered 32” length hurleys from Ireland and hand wrapped/taped them to coordinate with the jersey colours. These were mounted so they floated above the jersey a bit. Spacers from black acid-free foamcore were positioned underneath the handle and the bottom of the blades to lift the hurley off the jersey (the natural bow of the wooden sticks helped as well). The hurley was attached at the handle with a strap of clear polyester film. With my customer’s permission, the hurley was attached below the bottom of the jersey with two screws from behind the mount board. If the sticks had been valuable (e.g. autographed , held sentimental value, etc.), then a non-invasive mounting method would have been used to attach the bottom of the hurleys.

The jersey was mounted with my usual method... a 4-ply archival matboard form inserted into the body of the jersey, with a combination of nylon tags and hand-sewing to attach the jersey to the mount board. This jersey was relatively straight and even, except for the two yellow stripes at the shoulder area. The stripes weren’t sewn on in the same position at the shoulder, so that on one shoulder, the top yellow stripe had a natural tendency to slip behind and not show. With some extra stitches and a little more fullness in that sleeve, I was able to get most of the top yellow stripe to show and still have the bottom of the sleeve even with the bottom of the sleeve on the other side of the jersey.

The mat colours were chosen to complement the colours of the jersey. The shadow box was constructed by stacking two black faux leather profiles from Framerica (the narrow profile for the face frame and the wider profile for the extension box). Tru Vue’s conservation clear glass was chosen for its 99% UV protection.