What are Gallery Mats?
Mats don’t have to have a window that is proportional to the mat and centered. In other words, an 11 x 14 mat with an 8×10 window centered in the mat. Sometimes it is more dramatic or interesting to do a 16 x 20 mat with an 8 x 10 window centered or even raise the window farther from the bottom to make a “portrait” orientation. A good selling mat is an 11×14 mat with a 5 x 7 window. The extra space provided for the mat actually makes the small 5 x 7 stand out more than if it was in a standard 8 x 10 mat. It is more “dramatic”. For the Giclee’s, I use the Gallery Mat principle. The borders are 4″ top/bottom and 6″ left/right. For the smaller size prints, the Gallery Mat principle is also applied, but in a very different way. I print the images with larger & different top/bottom & left/right borders and the excess photo paper become a natural mat against a black or white paper underneath. See the frames page to view how these principles are employed. Combined with my unique framing optio
