what kind of glass?

[paulr]

At the recent Stephen Shore show at Houk Friedman gallery in New York, the work was framed with better looking glazing than I've ever seen. It seemed invisible ... no aparent color cast, and practically no glare. And none of the image-killing frosted appearance of regular non-glare glass. When I tried to catch glare from the lights in the glass, I saw faint multicolored reflections, just like on the surface of a multicoated lens.

Any idea what this stuff was?

I wanted to ask the guy working there, but he was glued to someone who looked like they had money.

[Erik Gould]

Can't get over that Shore show can you, Paul? I would bet that the glazing isn't glass, but acrylic. I switched over a few years ago, it's clearer, has no color cast and is available with a UV filter built in, that explains (i think) the multicolor reflections you saw. It's pretty common for large works because it is much lighter and safer. Cleaning, static and scratches are the downside, but its worth the trade off to me to avoid the green green glass of home.

[paulr]

That makes sense. I thought it might be some kind of acrylic because of the clarity, but I'd never seen it with that kind of coating on it. Made a big difference. Regular UV filtering plexi has anti glare coating on it?

[Neal Wydra]

Dear Paul,

It may have been a product called "Museum Glass" from Viratec.

http://www.viratec.com/downloads/museum_glass22.pdf

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I think Erik is right, I bought two prints from Dan Burkholder and he offered to frame them for me, he used clear acrylic, very thin and light weight. Funny thing is that it does not give any reflections and it is very transparent with no color cast. If I could find it here in Mexico it is what I would be using.

[Mark Sawyer]

There was also a glass called "Den Glass," (not sure of the spelling or if it's around anymore), which had a coating that looked very much like the coating on a lens. I found the colors to be a distraction unless the work was hung under ideal lighting conditions. It was made just for high-end/museum framing.

[Oren Grad]

Perhaps Denglas, or the equivalent Tru-Vu product - these are antireflection coated glass products.

[paulr]

I think you guys called it with the Museum Glass products. Seems like two or three companies are making similar glass with that name. It looks amazing.

[Paul Butzi]

Denglas, Water white Denglas, and several similar products are all candidates.

The only problem with these products is that they're damn expensive, and the glass apparently requires special equipment to cut.

If there's a similar acrylic product, I'd love to have a pointer to it. After the last earthquake up here popped several frames off the walls of my home, I've been reluctant to frame anything larger than, say, 11x14 with glass. (and, a 32x40 sheet of Denglas would be prohibitively expensive).

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Here you go Paul.

http://www.matshop.com/acrylic.html

Apparently acrylic has better UV absorbtion than glass ( I guess you are looking for this) the only problem I see might be using ammonia cleaners. In any case Dan used the 1 mm thickness and it looks great.