Dreaming of faraway destinations and the golden age of travel? Want to hang your vintage poster art collection in a dynamic, eye-catching way? During my ten years curating and selling original vintage posters at Christie’s Auction House in London I learned from the most exacting technical experts and stylish collectors in the art market about the importance of good composition, lighting and high quality framing. Less is often more. Follow our helpful hints and let your imagination soar.
First, decide how you want to hang your collection:
Grid or Gallery: a classic, clean and timeless way to hang. This works when your poster artworks are all of the same size, qualities and have either the same, or similar frames that work cohesively together.
What to do:
- Make sure your poster artworks work together, they don’t need to be too matchy-matchy, but they certainly shouldn’t clash.
- Create a cohesive colour palette or choose poster artworks with a similar composition or design range.
- Make sure your entire grid or gallery works for the space you want to fill.
- Remember, a grid is about creating a streamlined, elegant look where the eye catches the art as a whole collection.
- Pay special attention to distances between your works of art, it all depends on their size, but make sure the distance above and between is the same.
- It’s a rule of thumb to hang at eye level, but this all depends on what’s in front of your grid, so don’t get too hung up on this - unless you’re very tall and more likely to think everyone else is at your eye-level!
- Don’t put a grid near a cluster or they'll drown each other out.
Cluster: a playful and creative way to display your poster artworks in a dynamic, vibrant way.
What to do:
- Again, make sure the colour palette is cohesive while not being too matchy.
- Measure the space you want to create for your cluster wall art and then tape it out on the floor to see how you can make all your artworks fit in the best way possible.
- Start with your largest piece, make sure it’s not in the centre or it´ll capture all the attention, and then work from there.
- As a general rule, keep your second largest poster artwork away from the largest, try moving it diagonally away from the largest to keep the whole space dynamic.
- Mix up frame colours and styles more than you would on a grid. You could try three different colours of wood, or add a pop of gold or an ornate frame to mix things up. Remember, the charity shop and a can of spray paint can go a long way!
- Think about what goes in front of and around your cluster wall, from furniture and objects to statues, pottery and plants. A cluster wall is about the whole space.
- Be confident, social media and home decor magazines might make this look like a fine art, but really it’s just about letting go and trusting yourself.
PRO TIPS:
- Think light, lighting and the glass you use in your frames. if there is any natural light penetrating the room during the course of the day use specialist anti-reflective art glazing that has UV defence.
- If you have special bespoke walls or wallpaper, definitely consider invisible hanging to avoid making damaging mistakes.
- If your walls are at all damp and / or your live somewhere humid with saline air like Sri Lanka apply fridge magnets to the four corners of the backside on your frame. They will spare your the frame from being flush to the wall which will help keep the damp at bay.
- Don’t start hammering without a spirit level, preferably a laser spirit level if you can borrow one.
- Rather than putting pencil marks on your walls, use Post-Its if you’re going to be hammering.
- Always use raw plugs
- Fix a dustpan or folded piece of A4 paper underneath your screw driver when screwing to catch all the dust.
