What exactly constitutes archival-quality artwork? For the framing itself, it means that anything done to the artwork doesn't harm it in any way, and is fully reversible.
As far as archival artmaking techniques, that's a different story. A lot more things such as time, effort, cost, and forethought (often at the expense of spontaneity) go into both the before:making the art, and the after: displaying the art, than into the actual framing. With that in mind, here is a brief description of the steps involved in archival framing and display:
Archival framing begins by using acid-free materials, acid being one of the primary culprits contributing to the breakdown of paper as well as the fading of pigments. There are two types of acceptable archival papers: acid-free and 100% rag acid-free, with the latter, made from cotton or linen "rags", being the highest quality.
