Julie Finn
Don’t be afraid to show off your vintage photos! There are loads of ways to display vintage photographs while keeping them safe–read on to see how.
12 Ways to Display Vintage Photographs
1. Simply frame them. Especially if they’re black and white, often vintage photographs look their best simply mounted with photo corners into a plain frame. Use archivally-safe materials, of course!
2. Put them in a shadow box. The benefit to this is that you can also display other little treasures and found objects.
3. Clip them to chicken wire. Tack the chicken wire to the back of a frame, mount the photos using photo corners to acid-free mat board, then clip the clothespins or photo clips to the mat board, not the photos.
4. Set it under a cloche. You can find those pretty cheap at garage sales now, often with a tacky clock inside. Snatch them up, set the clocks aside for other projects–all those clock parts!–and use them to keep the dust off of your real treasures.
5. Slip it inside a bottle. I wouldn’t do this with your own favorite family photos, since you’ll have to curl and then uncurl it and thereby expose it to potential damage, but for your fun flea market finds? Feel free!
6. Display it behind a window. A window, especially a multi-paned one, makes for a lovely picture frame when cleaned up and mounted on the wall. Use photo corners to attach your photos directly to the glass.
7. Clip it to a chair back. Mat the photo and add glass to the front, then clip the entire set-up to the vintage chair back.
8. Hang it from a pants hanger. Use the same set-up as with the chair back, but instead clip it into a wooden pants hanger.
9. Scrapbook it. Scrapbookers tend to want their creations to be archival in quality, so it’s easy to find acid-free scrapbook papers and embellishments.
10. Make a garland. You can also pin other interesting old things, such as dried flowers or bits of lace, to the garland.
11. Put it in an old clock. Anything that has a glass front–antique clock, a meter–can be emptied and cleaned out and repurposed as a photo frame. The bonus is that the picture is much safer from dust inside an old clock that it would be hanging from the wall.
12. Seal it inside a Mason jar. Your photo is also safe and secure inside a Mason jar, and if you use a wide-mouthed jar, you don’t have to worry about curling it up, as you do with the bottles.
