Framing Sports Memorabilia: Shirts, Balls, Gloves and Boots

Sporting objects are framed badly more often than almost anything else we open up. Not because they are difficult, but because they get put into whatever frame was available rather than a frame built around them, and a signed ball squashed against glass or a shirt glued to a backing board cannot be undone afterwards.

This covers the objects we are asked about most: shirts, balls, gloves, boots, bats and the small flat things that go alongside them. The organising idea is that depth decides everything else, so it is worth understanding before you choose anything.

The short answer

Measure the object at its tallest point as it will sit in the frame. That figure, plus an allowance for glazing and mounting, is the internal depth you need, and it determines whether you are looking at a standard frame, a box frame, a deep box frame or an acrylic box. Everything else follows from it.

The second rule is that nothing should press against the glazing and nothing should be permanently fixed. Both are solved by construction rather than by care, which is why the depth question is not cosmetic.

Depth by object type

Everyday box framing sits between 30mm and 50mm. Past that we machine the profile from raw timber to whatever depth the object needs, running to 150mm and beyond with no fixed limit, which is covered in our guide to extra deep box frames. The reason it is machined rather than assembled from taller sides is that even a 5mm difference changes how the object sits behind the glass.

Shirts and garments

The mounting method that matters here is fine entomology pins passing between the weave threads at the seams, against a shaped foamcore template that holds the garment in relief. No adhesive, no staples, and nothing through the fabric itself, so the shirt comes out as it went in. On signed shirts we handle the signed area with cotton gloves and keep every fixing away from the signature.

A standard adult shirt in a box frame typically finishes around 650mm by 800mm, though every frame is made to the shirt. Rugby shirts are heavier cotton and need more support across the shoulders. Cycling jerseys are lighter and slipperier, so they want more pinning. Cricket sweaters and boxing robes are framed on the same principles with the depth adjusted. Our full guide to framing a football shirt goes through folded against full-front layouts, glazing and cost, and applies to any sports garment.

Balls

A ball is the object that most often defeats a conventional frame, because a size 5 football is about 220mm across and no picture frame is 220mm deep. There are three sensible routes.

• Cradle it in relief. The ball sits in a shaped well cut into the mount so part of its depth is recessed behind the mount line, which brings the required frame depth down considerably. This is the usual answer for a signed football alongside a shirt or photographs.

• Use an acrylic box instead of a frame. A transparent case lets the ball be seen from more than one side, which matters when the signature runs around the panels, and it is the better answer for a ball displayed on its own.

• Lay it on its side, for a rugby ball. At roughly 190mm across the width against 280mm to 300mm end to end, a rugby ball is a much easier object lying down than standing up.

One thing to say plainly about signed balls: the ink is the vulnerable part, not the leather. Marker on a synthetic panel is sitting on a surface it has no real bond with, so it wants UV filtering glazing and a position out of direct light more than it wants anything else.

Gloves and boots

Leather items have a problem the others do not: they hold whatever shape you leave them in. A boxing glove or a football boot that is simply laid flat will slump and crease over a few years, and the crease becomes permanent. So these get an internal support that holds the shape from inside, and the object is posed rather than placed.

Laces are the other decision. Left loose they look like the item was worn, which is usually the point, but they need their own fixing or they sag against the glazing over time. Boots in particular are worth framing as a pair rather than singly, because a pair reads as equipment and one boot reads as a leftover.

Depth here is measured per item, and it is the one category where we will not publish a figure. A pair of gloves posed knuckles-forward and the same pair laid flat are different frames, and a child's boot and an adult's are not comparable.

Bats, rackets and sticks

These are a length problem rather than a depth problem. A cricket bat is close to a metre long, and a hockey stick or an oar is longer again, so the frame quickly leaves normal picture-framing dimensions behind even though the object is fairly shallow.

A signed bat mounted with the face forward needs perhaps 40mm to 60mm of depth and well over a metre of length, which puts it into oversized framing territory for the frame itself. Practical points: support a bat at more than two points so it does not bow under its own weight over years, and think about how it comes off the wall, because a long frame is heavier and more awkward than its depth suggests.

Small flat items, and combining things

Ticket stubs, programmes, cap badges, press cuttings and photographs are the easiest items technically and the ones most often damaged, because they are paper and paper is where acid and tape do their work. These want a conservation mount, reversible hinges, and no pressure-sensitive tape anywhere near them. A newspaper cutting is the most fragile thing in most sporting displays by a wide margin.

Combining items is where most sporting displays end up, and it introduces one rule worth knowing before you plan a layout: the frame depth is set by the deepest item, and everything shallower has to be packed forward to sit at a sensible level. A shirt with a ball and a medal group is a 50mm-plus case with three different mounting heights inside it, not an average of the three. Our comparison of box frames and shadow boxes covers how the two constructions handle that differently.

Glazing, and where it hangs

Sporting memorabilia is unusually light-sensitive, and not in the places people expect. Club colours on modern sublimation-printed kit shift noticeably. Marker-pen signatures fade faster than the fabric under them. Medal ribbon dye is more fragile than the medal. In every case the thing that gives the object its value is the thing that goes first.

Standard float glass blocks only around 45% of ultraviolet light, so for anything signed or match-worn, UV filtering glazing at 99% is the upgrade that does the most work. Our guide to UV protection in picture framing sets out the tiers. On larger and deeper cases we often specify acrylic instead of glass, because weight becomes a real consideration once a case is both big and deep.

Position does as much as glazing. A case on a wall that never takes direct sun will outlast the same case opposite a south-facing window regardless of what is in front of it, and away from radiators matters too: a sealed case above a heat source cycles humidity every day.

What it costs

What moves those figures is glazing tier first, then the number of separately mounted elements, then frame size and finish. Museum-grade glazing on a large case is a bigger line than most people assume, and it is usually the right place to spend.

When we are the wrong choice

Worth being direct about this, because it saves everyone time. Everything we make is built to measure, and our minimum order value for new clients is £300. If you have a single glove or a replica shirt and a budget under about £100, we are not the right workshop for it, and there are high street and online options that will serve you perfectly well at that level.

Where it is worth commissioning properly is when the object cannot be replaced: match-worn kit, anything signed in person, a medal group, a presentation item, or a display going into a club or a boardroom. The test is not what the object cost. It is whether you could get another one.

How we work on object framing

Every piece is assessed with the object in front of us, because a photograph does not tell us how a garment hangs or how a leather item has set. From there the profile is machined to the depth the object needs, the mounting is designed to be fully reversible, and the case is built to hold everything clear of the glazing. We have been doing this from the workshop in Bollington since 1974, we are members of the Fine Art Trade Guild and the Museums Association, and the framing carries our 5 year guarantee.

Our object framing service covers the process, with dedicated pages for football shirt framing and medal framing. Our guide to framing medals covers military groups and court mounting in detail.

If you have something you are unsure about, send us photographs from a couple of angles and a rough measurement at the tallest point, and we will tell you what construction it needs and what it would cost.