A Grandfather Remembered and Revered

 I did not know my own grandfathers well at all.  Truth be told, I never even met my mother's father, but I think, based on the one photo I have of him, that I inherited my moustache from him.   My father's father was an avid bird hunter and gear fisherman.  I have a photo of two of his setters, and a few of his shotgun shell boxes.   You can click on the pics to see an enlarged version.

Sadly, I never got to hunt or fish with him.

Not so for a fellow that recently contacted me about a creating a shadow box through Speypages message system.  Johnny Maltby's grandfather Charles (Chuck) Maltby was also a serious hunter and angler, and he and his wife would, according to John, often pick him up and take him fishing after school.  Chuck Maltby and his wife relaxing along the Ausable in Michigan:

John relates that his granddad was an architect, but was mostly a troutfisher, woodworker, and grouse hunter.  And an artist on several levels.  He made John this bobbin threader:

He made these tackle boxes for the Kalamazoo Trout Unlimited chapter every year:

John told me that the binders behind the box above contain his grandfather's notes on every trout over 6 inches that he caught between 1951 and 2011.  John wryly noted that "everyone thinks Robert Travers caught the most trout in Michigan...they are very wrong!"

Chuck Maltby took many trips to Yellowstone over the years, and would draw his own post cards to send back to the family.  He also tied his own flies.  These two facts lead us to why John contacted me in the first place:  he wanted a shadow box that contained mementos  of his grandfather's talent and thoughtfulness.  I agreed that it was a delightful idea, and why didn't John send me some cards and flies and we'd see what would become of it.

John sent me these two post cards that his grandfather drew, and 6 flies he tied:

I was unsure about how to mount the post cards and so purchased some clear "envelopes" that post card collectors use to store their cards.  That was never going to look right, so I eventually mounted them the same way I mount lithographs - with an acid-free hinge/tape system.

I played around with arrangements, and settled on this one:

That's the easy part.  Now a person has to start worrying about windows and spacers and such, and draw it out.

So, you get the top mat all cut out and put back together, now you have to stick the bottom mat on to that with two sided tape, and map out all the new cuts.  Gets a little dizzying!

I selected mats that I thought complemented the art, and I think it worked out.  I also used only an eighth inch difference between the mats, instead of a more customary one quarter inch.

Adding a one half inch foam core spacer gave the framing the depth it needed for the flies:

Now, about those flies.  I'm used to mounting nice big Atlantic salmon wet flies, either on their own posts or using beads:

These flies were little, puffy trout flies.  What to do?   I can (and do) make myself superglue a big salmon fly to a post by the hook point.  That's still what museum folks (remember, I used to be one of those) want: a  reversible attachment.  And the bead method is totally reversible.   Time for some experiments.  I have seen stiff, tiny diameter wire twisted around a fly to mount it (I have a John Betts litho with the fly mounted that way by a fellow in Denver), but this framing has to travel from Vermont to Chicago; I need a pretty bulletproof method to keep the flies aligned.

I needed a different kind of bead to "shroud" the wire.  Enter Heddie, from my high school homeroom fifty two years ago.  We are "friends" on facebook (even though she became a lawyer after high school) and I knew she is into "beading."   She turned me on to what has to be the world's biggest bead company, and we came up with just what the lawyer ordered...a little tiny clear tube that the wire could pass through on its way through the matboard to be secured on the other side.

My first attempt looked like this:

That silver wire wasn't going to cut it, so yippee, more fly tying materials!

A nice delicate yet stout arrangement:

Pretty invisible set-up looking head on:

I chose a red chestnut stain for the oak frame.  Think it complemented the artwork nicely.

Some closeups of Chuck Maltby's ever-so-cool post cards at home in the finished frame:

With renewed interest in bullet-proof packaging after a debacle with the USPS and their alleged insurance after they used one of my frames that went to California as a frisbee, I am happy to report that the framing is safely enjoying its place on Johnny Maltby's den wall.  All's well that ends well.

Cheers,

Gary