Exhibit label mounting board

Science Museum exhibit label mounting board for making passepartout-frame glazed labels together with three wooden guide-strips, a reel of passepartout adhesive tape, black, and a specimen of passepartout-framed document (a cutting from the London ‘Evening News’, 1937, reporting the retirement of Science Museum Keeper E. A. Forward), unsigned, name and place of manufacture unknown, United Kingdom, 1930-1950

Until the 1950s the usual way of preparing exhibit labels was to flush-frame them with glass using passepartout adhesive tape. Once glasg of the correct size had been cut by the Museum's workshop, the framing process was made quick and easy by using a mounting board. They were to be found in all the Museum’s ‘workrooms’, where the museum assistants had their desks. The last label to be prepared in this way was by John Liffen, former Curator of Communications, for the Photography gallery in 1975, where a reproduction of the first colour photograph was added to an existing free-standing panel.