Matt Isble – CustomCat1

How to Make A Support Mount for a Bowl

Matt Isble — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 20:26:46 +0000

Hi Gang,

We can across this nice article (May 9, 2016) about making a support mount for a bowl that we thought you’d be interested in reading. Mount Making Focus is a nice resource. The lessons could be widely applied to various bowl materials and eras. What do you think? Do you have a slightly different method you’d care to share, please include your own (with pictures) down below or write an original article by clicking on a “Trade Yours” link.

Pre-Columbian Bowl Mount

It’s been many years since I made this mount, but it remains one of the most spatially interesting and sculptural pieces I’ve ever built. The bowl was a beautiful piece of Pre-Columbian ceramic, (probably Moche) although I do not know the exact region or age. As I recall, it was in reasonable condition for its age but had enough cracking and weakness in the wide rim that it needed a great deal of support to be displayed in the desired vertical orientation. Besides trying to make the display visually exciting, I was also working to help it survive future seismic events in its Pacific Northwest home.

Using strips of mat board as a templating material, I laid out the fair curves of the proposed mount along the strongest parts of the object. Finding the best locations for support defines the 3D relationships of the various pieces. As the design took shape, I taped the pieces together to give a feel of the final mount. At some point, I felt I had enough information to start bending annealed brass stock and fitting it directly to the curves of the object. This is where the value of the mat board templating became apparent. Through using it, I was able to determine a path for each piece of metal that was a simple curve. There is no twisting in any of the main structural elements. If twists are introduced into the geometry of the mount, the complexity of the spatial relationships vastly increases, and the ability to maintain alignment with the object becomes much more difficult.

Once the curves were established, the connecting pieces were fitted and joining begun. At each step of the way, the padded framework was returned to the object to confirm fit, and to mark the lengths and angles of the next additions. Soon the hanging structure was fabricated and small triangulating strut added to counteract any sagging by the support web.

When completed, the bowl slipped into the padded mount with a feeling of great security and support. To ensure that position, a fine cable was looped over the bowl at the junction of the flare and the base, and secured with a #4-40 screw in a tapped hole. With this final security measure, the mounted bowl was both beautiful, and prepared to withstand a seismic event. On February 28th 2001, that test was given by the 6.8 magnitude Nisqually earthquake. This bowl, and all other pieces that had been mounted, came through with no damage. Whew…

The Battle Between Beautiful Terrazzo Floors and the Casework that Lay Upon it

Matt Isble — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 22:55:25 +0000

Imagine pools of wax swooshing around on the floor, moving this way and that, usually in the dead of night so the buffed wax has time to dry before everyone comes in to work the next day. It makes your museum look its best and is always an “OOooo” and “Wow” moment when you come in to see the beautiful work.

I have that feeling as well, except I also have the sense of dread, the knowledge that our larger casework have been further glued down to the floor. We have put a cork foot on all our case work so they can slide when need be, but also have some tooth so they don’t slide unnecessarily. I’ll write another article on feet and ballasts at some point because there are caveats to all of this. This cork and the bare MDF at the bottom of the case wall are sponges for this floor stripper and wax. We’ve had to performs some extreme measures to rip it up and away from the the floor.

Not to mention the permanent damage done to the terrazzo where pools set under the case work. I haven’t done an interview with the custodial staff on this, but I think a stripper goes down first and that’s what pools up and eats the floor, but that’s just a guess.

If I may digress, do give proper training to the person who babysits the late night wax crew. They are usually an outside company and know nothing of museums and how to behave. We had splattered wax on our walls (thank god there weren’t low sculptures in the area) and a mangled corner on a riser from these guys. The babysitter needs to give a pep talk or stand over them, or, or, or?

The Ever-Evolving Art of Casework Design and Fabrication

In an ideal world, we’d remove all the casework before the wax job is done, but that’s a lot of labor and you might end up with an empty gallery for a few days as you return cases and objects before opening each day.

So, here is our next move. We are first painting the bottom edges of the furniture (peds, cases, and risers). This will seal the MDF so it will (hopefully) repel the liquid they lay down. This paint goes up the inside edge as well. I think ideally we’d do this in a semi-gloss, but in the case of this riser we only had flat black on hand and this innovation occurred while giving these a paint job for a refresh of the gallery space.

That is to say, we had little time between thinking of this idea and having to be ready with the furniture. For both the semi and flat we put three-coat on this bottom edge.

Next, we put strips of Ultra High Molecular Weight plastic (UHMW) on all bottom edges. Again, if we had more time, perhaps we would have bought 3/4″ wide UHMW plastic to cover more fully the foot, but 1/2″ will have to do for now.

It’s not very thick, perhaps 1/32″, but at least it’s something to raise the case up and hopefully it won’t stick to the wax. Perhaps it would be worth the investment to buy a thicker UHMW plastic, maybe 1/8″ or so. So, cross your fingers for us and let everyone on MuseumTrade know if you’ve encountered this before (success or failure), what you did, and what you would do differently.

Easy Museum Interactive Using Custom Plastic Puzzle

Matt Isble — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 20:24:11 +0000

Hello MT Community,

Here’s a very basic interactive for your museum: a plastic puzzle using a custom image of the artwork.What we’ve provided for our visitors is an opportunity to sit and relax, helping them make it though our large museum. And here they can also spend quality time with a work of art. We all know how briefly people pass by individual paintings (bonus points for anyone who can add a comment below about any formal or informal study they’ve conducted at their institution). This interactive can engage visitors in looking deeply at all aspects of the painting, noticing things they had not caught upon their first glance. This type of puzzle can be bought online, with a 11×14″ version costing between $30 and $50. And your education department could definitely make use of it after the run of the show. Just be sure that you’ve identified the right type of art for this project, looking especially for complexity and depth. The end result? Visitors that are engaged and recharged. Maybe they’ll even look at that next painting a little bit longer?

This may not break new ground but it’s a highly functional project to pull out of the museum professional’s box of tricks. Please feel free to also cover something that you might think of as basic, too. Your ordinary is going to be someone else’s epiphany.

Art Packers Hot Glue Gun Caddy on the Go

Matt Isble — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 01:39:44 +0000

We had Ship Art International here the other day to crate our Claire Falkenstein and they whipped out this caddy for a 3M industrial strength low temperature glue gun and its glue sticks. Quick and dirty design, but effective and makes use of discarded materials most of us have around. Many thanks to Clay and Julie for letting me share this with all of you. By the way, if you haven’t already, you should invest in a glue gun like this. Not only does it have high output, but the low temperature won’t melt your material which could render the glue useless as it melts and recesses into the foam block (or whatever you’re working with). How about all of you, where do you keep you hot glue gun?

Painting Walls without Streaks Using a Latex Extender Solution

Matt Isble — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 18:23:53 +0000

We’ve had issues with streaking in out paint jobs. It’s not always obvious, sometimes it depends on the light, sometimes you need to be an installer to see it, but none the less it’s bothersome. I doesn’t matter how wet we leave out edge, we’d get a consistent streak evenly spaced across the wall. If you really fly and stay thick and wet it can be lessened, but thick paint can lead to thick texture and we don’t want that either. FYI, we’re usually using 3/8″ naps to keep a low wall texture, but we’ve tried going to 1/2″ to see if that alleviated the issue.

Our paint supplier suggested trying this latex extender solution called XIM Latex X-Tender, but then they changed their product line and now deal M-1 (A Sunnyside Quality Product), they work the same and a lot of companies make something similar. I thought it might just be one of those extras they try to sell you just to get a little up-sell on the purchase, but I like my guys and trusted their thoughts on my issue. Yep, it worked like a charm. we started out using 4 ounces per gallon with instant results, but I’m thinking of going up to 5 ounces on the next job and analyze the difference. The product suggests two to six ounces per gallon. The only thing I haven’t done is taken a with and without shot to illustrate the difference. Have you? Are there other similar products that we should be trying?