The following is a link to DECOR Magazine’s September issue. The cover is the frame job. The article is an explanation as to what it took to make just the right frame.
Cover Frame before Publication
Just back from a little research trip into Rococo and Hepplewhite (late 18th Cen. English), applied arts as it applied to frames and furniture. George Hepplewhite was a contemporary of Chippendale. As Chippendale focused on a more “Oriental” flavor in his stew of furniture, Hepplewhite had a more “conventional” bent toward the Rococo as well as the lacey French look in the Louie XV furniture.
Both were still designs that are best enclosed in the term “English Rococo”, even though there was much deviation from the pure structures and forms. But the hallmark asymmetrical “C”s and “S”s, are still apparent in the top caps of their furniture and frames.
One of the interesting parts that was of interest to me, and would have bored my wife to tears, (and I won’t bore you with the four hours of discussion here), was the advanced use of English foliage in place of the more traditional forms and features. (Like I said; interesting to me)
But within the discussion of holly, ivy, berries, and oak leaves was another topic of restoration, cleaning, and care along with the decades of miss-care that have led to scouring, succumbing of details, patina in wrong places, and in some humble opinions “the creation of expensive fire starter”.
One of the most exquisite, but least understood steps in fine finishes of the applied arts was and is the final finish. First, it is the combination of two simple products (wax and dust), that is not “seen” or “noticed” by the general public; and yet when a frame lacks these two as they do more often than not these days in a world of “Paint it, and slap some hard coat of urethane on it so they can’t ruin it”; the textural conversation in the details is lacking most verbs and a fair portion of the verbs and adjectives.
Paint will never replace the look of dust that accumulates in nooks, crannies and bellybuttons. (See, that’s why you paint your fingernails, toenails, and face but not your . . .. ) Which is especially true for paint and finishes that are applied by machines as picture frame moulding goes whizzing through at 92mph; I don’t care how smart or talented the computer is that’s driving the machine; just not going to happen.
The process that has been the trade for hundreds of years, is warm soft-ish wax; applied and allowed to start to set up, then pumice stone in the form of a grey powder, or rotten stone (pumice powder colored by a clay of red, green or blue) or talc called “whiting” which are applied with sometimes large brushes, medium brushes, or small brushes, along with gauche for different colors. Once the mass of the stone is dusted over all of where it needs to be, it is carefully removed with rags, papers, brushes, and polishing bags that contain cotton linter. Each finisher has their favorites. Personally, I’m a big fan of “get it done, have fun with it, and make it look good.”
I have been known to spend many hours with a final wax finish, and I have had some finishers laugh at all the time I “wasted”, and others who chuckled knowingly and offered that they had been known to spend more than a day or two to get it to look “just right”.
So what has this all got to do with the price of tea in China….. it’s “no matter how long it took to painstakingly achieve that special look, whether it was the master Hepplewhite himself, or myself spending half a day or even John Peeler taking two weeks to get the look just right on his reproduction of a Jacobin Rawlins lower Norman Rococo finish”: It only takes one housewife, a torn up pair of her husband’s old Tighty-Whiteys and a can of Pledge, twelve and a half seconds to undo all of that work.
There was a reason Turkey feather dusters have been used for hundreds of years.
Yesterday I was counting calories, and I came to a quandary; a good tasting item was 36 calories less than a great tasting similar item. In my days count, those 36 calories were outside of my acceptable range of 1,800 calories. Even though it would only be 2%. So what’s the big deal?
It wasn’t; I had that great meal and never thought twice about it; and it probably made up for those many days that I never got within 10% of 1,700 much less the whole target. So what’s the big deal?
Well, that really is the question; what is the big deal about 2% or 10%? These days, if a discount is only 10%, we don’t even slow the car, much less get out and go look. Could you imagine Macy’s or Sear’s making a full spread ad in the Sunday newspapers across the country about a “2 Day, 2% OFF” sale? They would get laughed out of town.
In the old days of picture framing you could have regular clear glass, or a frosted glass called “non-glare” that in the back room we just called “the fog”, because, that’s all it did; no glare, just a big white fog, and you still couldn’t see your picture, it just cost you about 20% more. It’s still offered today. If you bring your 9mm Glock along, stick it to my head, I’ll actually sell you some. Really.
Here in the 21st century we have learned that the blue leisure suit is now hmmm gray, and the afro has turned kind of orange, her really bitchen paisley acetate dress that felt so good during the slow dances is well looking more like that science project near the back of the refrigerator and the back ground has turned into ‘where were we?’ all because of age. Not! And, it wasn’t really because the photo was poor quality, except the Kmart snaps. But mostly it was Ultra Violet, that same stuff you have your lenses coated to guard against.
I’ve heard people use terms like “SPF for your art”, or “Sun Block for that special memory”, and those are hmmm ‘good’, but let’s get real here. What that “99% UV block” means is that in a certain range of the light spectrum that we can’t see (unless we go down to the disco and dance the night away under the black light), 200-400 nanometers, which is the range of UVA and UVB rays that cause the most damage to our skin, retinas, and disco era photos; the coating on your glasses, and the new coating on what is called “Museum Glass” blocks almost all of the harmful rays of light.
But let’s talk about “light” for a moment, and I’ll try to keep it lite. There are different measures of light and they all mean different things. Let’s take that 100watt light bulb we used to love (that now gets marketed but it got downgraded to a 60watt), at 100watts it pumped out 2,100 lumens (the light the eye perceives) where the 60 only produces around 1,600 or hmm 40% less, or about the same as a 23watt compact florescent light.
People worry about the sunlight, but now have Low-E glass, double paned windows, so where the sunlight hitting the house maybe knocking on the window at 32,000 ft pounds of pressure, by the time it gets inside, it’s floating around at less than 1,600. Meanwhile those 8’ long tube fluorescents, that incandescent bulb you refuse to swap out for anything else over in the corner lamp, and the three compact fluorescents about the room combine to pump the room full of 4,000 foot pounds of light. So without getting deep about all of this, the answer is that it isn’t the sun, as much as all the light we produce inside that is killing that Monet poster, the chenille bed spread, and the “on-sale” leather couch.
So, what to do? Well, regular glass only blocks about 38% of the nasties, acrylic called OP3 blocks 98% but scratches, or there is Conservation Clear glass that blocks 97%, and then the stuff I was originally talking about, Museum; at 99%.
So what has this to do with counting calories, well I was eating that muffin, while I was looking over a seemingly totally ridiculous ad campaign touting that this company’s Museum glass now blocks 99% instead of the industry’s standard 97%.
And so it got me wondering; “how much money will they spend to convince me that 2% really makes that much difference?”
2%? Really? Now I’m waiting for that Sears ad.
Some would call it, inspiration, or muse, or just simply “coming up with a good idea”; but in reality, that is neither the right term nor description of a great design of a picture frame that improves the story of the art or picture it surrounds. You may be inspired by something in the story of the art or image, you may be moved to ascend to a design you would normally be hesitant to accomplish, or even work at design ideas until one works better than another; but it all boils down to the concept, and that doesn’t just pop out of thin air.
Concept. Even the “concept” of the word itself begs for a source of definition. Concept does not survive in the ether unsupported. The six year old Michelangelo didn’t just toddle up to a 12’ block of white stone and start cracking his knuckles saying ‘there’s a David in there’; he was told the story of David guarding his sheep, he learned how to carve stone, he learned how to pose a model to draw a picture of what would become a statue that tells a story.
The same was true for the designer of the Empire State Building, as a fresh out of high school, ‘paper or plastic’ aged kid, he might have had concepts of larger buildings, but nothing new and beyond what he had experienced and lived or gone to school in. That, took time, education, and experience before he was able to even start sharpening his pencil, much less draw the plans.
Unfortunately, there is a hubris concept by the captains of industry and larger companies, that give a kid a couple of weeks pushing a broom, and nailing a few frames together and they are all “TEEed up” (Time, Education, Experience) and ready to just pop out those wonderful concepts that the customers seek, deserve, and pay for. And the sad reality is that they are as TEEed up for that task as they’re ready to climb Mt Everest. And so, we get four flat sticks painted black hanging around a triple mat. (because some brainiac in corporate came up with the brilliant concept that three looks better, and sells more mat board . . . I think he’s the one driving the stretch limo Hummer for his 23 mile commute. Please, someone go over there and flatten all five tires so we can watch him cry, please.)
There is a place for a simple black frame; I just don’t remember the name of the sanitation land fill at this moment. Unfortunately for America, we not only have the reputation of being the largest consumers of illegal drugs, killing each other with guns or cars, but also 65%, by length, of all moulding sold by the picture framing industry, is either a beautifully hand carved delicate French Rococo Revival Trophy frame hand finished in a finely polished 23kt water gilded gold leaf, or, a flat black stick. Don’t look over there at your diplomas, you already know I’m talking about them.
The average graduate in a profession as cheap as a lawyer, invested $180,000 and 7-9 years in those three little pieces of paper (no, they are not on skin any more). A general practice doctor with ten years of school at a state school is well north of $300,000. And you walk into any office, and wonder if they sent their visually impaired mother out to do the shopping for the frames.
Concept; and you thought I was talking about how I might come up with an award winning concept for an exquisite little print of Northern Vancouver Island Indigenous Species art? Oh, that was easy . . . I reached down and pulled it out of . . .. Sorry, snarky, but also not true.
The story that is told in the circle of life is told with set designs, so the design of the framing needed to harmonize and echo the image, but remain subdued. (Yes, I did choose this black frame to talk about on purpose.) The pattern is rejoiced in the polished black on the satin black. There is no red or white in the design because that was left for the artist’s work and story to shine through; the frame is there only to support and call attention to the story the art tells. My TEE dates back to growing up next to, and playing on an Indian Reservation, years of being around needle crafters and sewers and understanding the powerful effect of color on color, and about forty years of hand carving mats (even as deep as this 24-ply black solid core rag mat) and woodworking since I was four and putting dents in the family furniture and walls with hammers.
But the “concept” I’m talking about here, is the “concept” of the things we frame, we frame because we have an investment in them; money, time, emotion. We are never going back to Boston College and getting a MD PhD again, USC and getting a Heisman again, or OSU and getting that LLB again. Your grandparents won’t be getting married at that little church again, your child won’t be 11lbs 3ozs again (or his twin 11lbs 5ozs . . . mom was and is a Saint), or that stupid all night ride with your best friend where you both got flat tires and ended up walking your bikes the last three miles, but you got that sunrise picture and know more about that friend than you can ever tell anyone.
And those diplomas and pictures are either 60% chance in a drawer, 25% chance in a scrap book, and 14% chance in a flat stick black frame with a white mat. Only 1% got it. That 1% still gets people stopping to look at the diploma or picture. Because, that 1% was graced with a little help telling their story, because they got help from a true Professional Picture Framer who understood the “concept” that there is no question of “wood or plastic”.
Oh, here is a 1%; a young lawyer who fully understands the “concept”.
Vertical Grain Douglas fir with trough tenons pegged with hand carved elk antler, silk double-stepped mat, school color fillet, with Lady Justice engraved in the corner; Stately for an Assistant District Attorney, and ready when the time comes for the corner office.
Sometimes, it’s all about the details.
A short time ago a lady asked me in all seriousness, why four little sticks could be so expensive. Having grown up with a father who was a US Forester, and later Bureau of Land Management with the Dept of Agriculture, and was a timber Cruiser when I was born, while we lived in the last company logging town in California (Johnsondale, CA), and as a lifelong woodworker, I had a little bit of knowledge about the subject. You see, I don’t think that milk comes from a gallon jug in the grocery store, because I’ve milked that cow/goat.
So, this is what I told her, as to – -
Why Framing is “So Expensive”
First, you plant many seeds and pay a Forester to look after them
Then you wait about 100 years for a good one to grow up tall and straight.
Then you pay an Ecological Impact Surveyor to come along and Survey the Ecology and make sure there are no Spotted Owls, Darter snails, pigmy rabbits, Red Bellied Skanks or other endangered species living in the potential logging zone.
Then the US Forest Service sends a Timber Cruiser out to mark the trees to be cut.
Then you pay the government to hold an auction on the timber
Then you pay a logger to cut the tree down and buck it into a 12’6” log
The guy with the skidder, drags/skids it over to the monkey who throws a cat noose on the leading end
The High Wire Jack slings the log up or down hill (it’s always on a hill don’t you know) to the loader
The loader either stacks the log or loads it on the cradle of the truck.
Then you pay the trucker about $500-1000 to haul the load (1 log or 20) to the mill.
At the mill, the Puncher reads the log ends and grades the species and size,
Then an Eagle snatcher grabs the load and takes it to the pile it belongs in by species.
Then two Waders come along and sort the pile for the day’s run or a hold
When the log rolls, first a Skinner runs his passes to rip the bark off which is the first time it makes money in its life.
Now the “Pole” (skinned log), meets the first Grader who looks for straightness and clean shape butt to tip.
Then you pay a knowledgeable guy called the Sawyer to slice and dice the log to get the most products from that bit of tree. He’s not expensive, that 20” thick tree won’t take up more than 3-4 minutes of his time.
Next the boards fly into a pile that a Fork Lift driver lifts over to an area with other square piles of 1,000 board feet called a unit. There they will sit for a few weeks to a few years depending on how thick they are. All the while, that wood is costing rent of that space on the ground.
Eventually you pay for a guy with a larger fork lift that picks up the piles and drives them into great big sheds called kilns. Think of them as very big Susie Homemaker ovens. The wood will “cook” at 140°F for about a week.
After the Kilns, the wood is sorted by two very expensive men called Fine Graders, who grade each and every piece into 9 different categories. Moulding is the highest grade, and will produce the least amount of units moving forward from here.
The units will be auctioned to wood vendors, which is why wood prices go up and down.
When the moulding manufacturer calls for some units of lumber, the vendor hires a guy on a fork lift to load a truck, a secretary to type up the order and bills of lading and input all that into files including the records that go to the Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Land Management, and possibly the US Forest Service and maybe even the state forestry division, the Forest Stewardship Council and Wood Association of Responsible Production; as well as any other Ecological Impact watchdog organization that may have a vested interest.
When the lumber arrives at the milling plant, it is off loaded (there’s that guy on a fork lift again), and checked for grade and moisture content. Anything over 6% is rejected, and 5%-6% needs to sit for days or weeks to get back down to 4% moisture content and stable (remember the old adage “Time is Money” – - it really applies here).
The 4% or lower is graded and ripped by a couple of moulding specialist Sawyers. These high paid guys will rip and mill to maintain the best or most consistent appearance in the moulding.
Then you pay for the Moulders who actually maintain and run the expensive machine that makes the final shape of the moulding.
Once the wood is massed into shape, it is run through the sanding machine one or two passes until the surfaces are the consistent pattern and smoothness needed for the finishing phase.
The finishing takes place in a large room that is just slightly more positively charged with clean air than is being taken out. The only place cleaner is a “White Room” where they make computer chips.
Depending on the finish and appearance, the moulding may take as many as a dozen passes through the paint booths. Each pass takes time to make the pass, and to dry. For each layer of color or different coats, there is expensive time for a team to tear down, clean and reset the equipment. And all of this is the fiefdom of the Finisher and their staff
Once the moulding is finished and dry and cured, it is time to wrap the sticks in bundles of two which is a job for two people.
Then the moulding is crated and ready to be shipped, (by those same two people), to the vendor. So they call a trucking company. (Man, those truckers are everywhere.)
After the vendor has taken the moulding in, one of his crew has stuck it in a rack, and accounted for the shipment, they can begin to sell it to the picture framer.
The framer can order those two sticks, have the moulding chopped to near the size they need, chopped with miters to exactly the lengths they need, or even have it chopped to size and joined. So one or more of the vendor’s crew will pull the moulding, chop, join (whatever is needed) and wrap it to ship to the framer.
Once the vendor has filled out all the paper work, and loaded the truck, the trucker brings the frame parts to the picture framer.
Then the picture framer processes the moulding until they have a “frame” ready to fit by a fitter.
Along the way . . . it only took a little over 100 years and about 100 hands to make your frame; please treat it as such and take care of it. Yours may not be the last hands that will take care of it.
It was just one of those small 3-1/3 x 5 black and white photos that plagued our existence in the 1950s and 1960s. If someone had just returned from a “trip of a lifetime” anytime in that last year or so, and they were inviting you to dinner, you were going to either get the 8mm home movies or the three large books of the little pictures that were at best in focus enough to glaringly show that the photographer was at best a trained seal and at worst had no idea about composing an image or what would or would not create any interest in the future dinner guests.
I never did understand what the brain trust at Eastman Kodak was thinking about when they came up with the white border and wavy edge. I suppose, it was an attempt to make it look like the decal edge of fine paper and invitations to important things like weddings or funerals or graduations; things you put on a monkey suit for.
But there it lay in front of me and the nice lady waited with her white gloves clasped in her right hand like it was a baton to be passed if I chose to be in the race. The image was a little washed out by the intense Mediterranean sun that was just past the meridian. Today I would have noticed things like the depth of field and focal point being a bit deep and obscured respectively. The composition was interesting, and in a moment poignant. The photographer who had taken the pictures had created an image that had a very slow rhythm and captured a bitter sweet moment in the sun drenched afternoon in Athens.
Over the years, I have been asked what is the most difficult thing I have ever framed, or the most interesting, most intricate frame, the hardest to design for or the most creative; all of which come with qualifiers because it is usually other picture framers taking my classes or sitting around dinner tables at conventions. The most difficult would have to be the half of a racing Porche; the most intricate would be several pre 18th Century tabernacle frames, and things like “hardest” come with materials, design, budget or other qualifiers that can span the range of a long evening in the telling, and what the bottle on the table contains.
But the one question that only a few really insightful people have ever flirted around with is: “Have you ever had a project that stopped your heart?”
Don’t confuse that question with the more mundane “Have you ever done a frame job that took your breath away?”; With a slap down answer of ‘sure, every day’. The truth be known, hearing that little intake of air, is the reward I get for my soul; the money just pays the bills. And if you ever thought that picture framers are in this business to get rich, you don’t understand. You may think framing is expensive, but it’s the rent, overhead, materials, and insurances and other everyday boring things that make that one of a kind custom frame, the cost that it is. A poster of the Mona Lisa only costs you $25 Euro at the Louvre, but it’s the $3,800 trip to get there that drives the cost up; and as for the cost of the original, let’s talks.
So getting back to stopping ones heart, and why it is not so easy. First, you have to understand that customers don’t have picture they want framed so they can fill their walls. They have stories, that the pictures represent, and they want help telling their story, better; even if it is only to them alone, in their office in their home, where no one else will see. It is their emotional story; they decide how they want it told.
So I always come back to this story, because it is also my story, my epiphany, my raising up to understand the power of a picture frame in the telling of a story. And there lay all the building blocks of the story, I just didn’t have the mortar in which to raise the stones and cement the building blocks into the proper presentation; and so I asked.
Usually the customer puts down the picture and states (because it really comes out as a demand to perform than and query as to real thinking … Just something to think about next time you visit your picture framer.), “What do you think?” But, this lady had not; instead she had asked if I could do the picture justice. Justice?
So, much like a smart kindergarten teacher asking the child about the picture they have drawn, who knows better than to say ‘what a nice hippopotamus that is’ only to be told it is the child’s mother, I asked the proper question of ‘I’m assuming that is a much younger you, and maybe your father or grandfather and you were there on a trip to Athens . . . but tell me what is going on, because actually to me, it looks a little sad.’
And as they say in the movies; ‘and that is when the wheels came off.’
She looked at me for a moment with that ten thousand mile stare that cuts right through to your soul and lays your life open to the elements and the gods. Slowly her sad kind eyes returned to us, as she slowly set down her purse, and gloves, then removed her straw hat and laid it down also on the counter, it was as if she was stripped of her armor.
“My father had taught at the University all of my life.” She began. He had worked long days as he taught the unwashed about the great places and peoples of the world. He was a cultural social anthropologist. The stories he read her as a little girl were books that college students had trudged their lives through only when threatened or beaten by grades. By the time her mother died when she was only seven, she could tell you the peoples of the Mediterranean for almost any century you would name. She knew the capitals of the first Millennium long before she had to learn the state capitals in school. Her father had made the ancient world come to life for the little girl and she knew Genghis Khan and Marco Polo more intimately than the social dynamics of Jane, Dick and their dog Spot. They drove here and there as he did research for his papers, and visited every major and minor museum she could imagine. Her father had brought her the world to their small apartment near the university. She understood the academic world her father lived in and struggles of the “publish or perish”, and as she could have as easily just slipped into that world, instead she had chosen to practice medicine.
The academics of that day were paid paltry in comparison to the garnished bounty now mantled on some of the collegiate satyrs of today, and the habits thrust on them through the Great Depression and the rationing of WWII also allowed for some savings. So when this young woman had finished all of her medical school and training the academic father asked the new young doctor what she wanted for her “graduation”. Her response had been to spend some time together and a little travel.
In all the time that he had taught about the world, the most he had ever traveled outside of the United States was to Quebec and Toronto for seminars. He could tell you about the height, width and depth of the Great Pyramids, the length of the and power of the Amazon River, the importance of the Seine, the bridges over the Thames, and the battles fought one the Steppes of Russia but had never been. He knew the original street lay-lines for London, the temple arrangement of the Forbidden City, and where to buy that rug in the Grand Bazaar of Bagdad but had never been. And so, she had wanted to take him. And, he had wanted to go. But what he had not told her, was that he didn’t have that long to live.
They started West, and it was a seemingly mad dash from Temple to shrine to city to fortress. The places that had been the founding of the great eastern civilizations and religions; they saw them all. Hop-scotching through time and cultures, they remembered together the lessons he had taught and the research she had helped with and in turn used to write her own papers in high school and under grad college courses. They took pan-san tours of Hong Kong, canoe rides in the jungles of Southeast Asia, elephant rides in Bali and India, rickshaw rides in China and traveled by pony and camel in Mongolia, the Gobi and the great sands of Egypt. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, as they toured the old Ottoman Empire, he began to slow down.
As they had tea in Venice, she asked him point blank and he finally let her know that he was on his last legs. She asked him if he wanted to go home; and he responded that he was home. The world and she had always been his home. The doctor in her had known, but the daughter had refused to admit, but it was time to choose the final destination.
The final days in Athens, the cradle of the Modern Western Civilization, had been glorious, if not just a bit too hot for him. She had bought them both the over sized straw sun hats that they had laughed about as sojourners hats or ‘pithy helmets’ as they dug through their archeological finds and ‘poking abouts’ as they called them. The rest periods had become more of the day than the day periods. But he had asked for one last trip to the Acropolis and the Parthenon.
On the way back down the hill, they stopped to catch his breath. The sun was warm and reflected hotly off the marble but the cool of the stone’s core was refreshing as a seat. In that moment, they knew that this would be the last lesson, the last foray, the final lecture and a closing of a long and inspired education. The boy with the donkey and a camera happened along at that seminal moment, and captured the resolve of the young doctor letting go of the valiant yet exhausted scholar and knight who had given her the world and now only yearned for the final rest, and the resolve in the old man’s eyes that the play was done, and curtain must come down. In the cradle of a civilization a life was passing and in the finger on a button, and in the eye of a child, the film captured so little, and yet so much.
They never expected to see the photograph or the boy ever again, and yet true to his word, he delivered to their hotel the photo that they had paid only a few dozen drachma for. They enjoyed the last picture together that night as they ate in their room alone together. In the morning he was gone.
And there lay before me that photo that had been in her purse these last 30 years. And now, she wanted a fitting picture.
I had pointed to the Parthenon, and said “I can build him a shine”.
Slowly the idea sunk in as she raised her head to look at me and the sad eyes began to sparkle, “I think he would have enjoyed that, and more so enjoyed the humor.”
There are times, when as a picture framer, the rewards have been largely more rewarding from other than the paycheck. And those that are lucky enough to step into that realm are blessed.
As long as I have been framing I have heard, as every other framer has, that custom picture framing is expensive; except it is not true. What is true, and I won’t lie to you, is that good custom picture framing is not “cheap” either. But weighed out against time and all things being equal, food is expensive, tires are expensive, medicine is expensive, and anything you must buy over and over again is expensive.
I know, I know, “but we have to eat”; yes we do. But it is what we must eat to stay alive, or choose to eat to stay healthy, and those choices are what becomes expensive; and not even close to or even in the same universe as cheap.
Let’s take Valentine’s Day. Now there is a wonderful event. This is the celebration of a poor schnook monk who crosses the Emperor by not renouncing his faith, so the Emperor sends over some thugs to Val’s house, bashes in his face, cuts off his balls and generally trashes the last hour or so of the guy’s life. What does Val get? About 1,000 years later, some sad sack monk whose condition in life is not much different, decides that the good Val is actually a Christian Martyr. So he fires off a letter to the sitting Pope, who needs to make it look like he’s doing something, so he gets the ball rolling and eventually Val, makes Sainthood. Great!
So now we have a greetings card company who catches wind of this, and throws in some little naked babies, red hearts and expands the story which encourages a little flower grower in East Bejezzes to grow more red flowers than anybody ever wants or needs and in fact has to almost give them away at $5/100 flowers any other time of the year, but now for this one day sells them for $100 for a dozen and they are DEAD! And, really dead the week after.
And, let’s not forget Mrs. See’s a few other people whose sole purpose in life is to lighten your wallet and thicken your waist. Meanwhile, there are 900,347 little romantic restaurants wasting away in the post Chanukah/Christmas/Qwanza/New Years/Gung Ho Fat Choy season. And they are all doing the same thing; taking out the tables that seat six and eight and replacing them with rows and rows of tables for two. The regular meal that the cook knows how to cook with an edge of wow and excellence is shoved into the bottom drawer, and out comes the ‘special’ food that the chef is only sketchy about how to do even somewhat good. But the Valentine menu is cheaper to prepare and re-label with names like “Pollet l’Orange floating next to a heap of Risotto d’la Dei and white Frenched Asparagus spears. (Frozen orange juice concentrate poured over baked chicken breast and a side of Black Truffle oil drenching the day old Rissoto that they couldn’t previously sell, and diagonally cut canned asparagus the dude in the back bought at CostCo because they sounded good. Cook it at home for two and you might be up to the $6 mark, through in a really nice Pinot Gris and you have a very impressive dinner for under $40.)
But, on the day celebrating the beating to death a guy that lived almost 2,000 years ago, in a little bistro off the major street in the schee schee district, with a barely adequate wine, get ready for a price that would curl your hair and might expect to spend in a high end massage parlor leaving you satisfied for at least a couple of days.
Bring that same budget to a custom picture framer, choose a very nice photo frame and put that nice dorky picture of that ‘special day’ in it, stop by the store and get the frozen orange juice to pour over the roasted chicken, with a nice side salad and some of those goopy deep chocolate individual cakes, and a nice bottle of wine and brother, you will still have some money left over. Plus get satisfied enough to be smiling into next week, and she will never miss the over expensive flowers. (Buy them the next week as an ‘I forgot before’ make-up gift, when they are back to $20 for four dozen…. And you’ll get satisfied all over again with just Chinese takeout.)
One day I had a great customer come in with three modest sized counted cross stitched pieces. She was a really nice customer who we loved to see, even if she was just going next door for lunch and stopped in to say hi. (Yes, we love those people a lot because they remember that we are alive and exist.) But that day she had a dilemma, called ‘the husband’. Not that he was with her just that she knew he would want to know what she was spending on her ‘little hobby’.
Trust me men, when I tell you, if you ever want to be on the wrong side of the couch, belittle your spouse’s hobby that they spend hundreds of hours doing. And she was one of those that probably spend many hundreds of hours; so it wasn’t hollow flattery when I had to ask her which side was the front. It all looked that good and she was on the spot my new best friend love you big time.
So there we were, shoulder to shoulder conspiring and commiserating about the price, but how really great they looked; and not one was for her. They were for her sister, mother-in-law and her husband’s sister (who she didn’t really like), for the three mothers on Mother’s Day. (Don’t get me started about that one.)
“I just wish it wasn’t so expensive.” She was bemoaning, but not for her, but because of her husband.
I put my arm around her in my best ‘sisterly’ way; well, as best as a 280lb bearded line backer kind of guy can, and started to explain how framing is actually very reasonable, but that it’s new tires that are actually the more expensive. And that’s when the wheels came off.
“Don’t talk to me about how expensive tires are, my husband owns the Such Enough Tire Store.”
So as she stood trying to stare me down, or give me ‘the look’, which hasn’t worked on me since I was 10 years old and an inch taller than my mother; I started to get a very mean mercenary idea, which led to a very evil smirk and about the time it was sliding into a evil smile, she was smiling too and said “I don’t know what evil we are up to, but I bet I’m going to like your thinking.”
I told her I would trade her; $750+ frame job, for new tires on my car. She kept giving me that blank stare that my dog used to give me when I would try to change him to dry dog food. “What kind of car do you have?” And the crux of the matter had just hit the light. Everyone who doesn’t understand the long hours we put in for our crafts, thinks we are way over paid, right? She nods and I’m off like Lucifer to a Street Walkers convention in Vatican City. I told her to ‘tell him that I have one of those Porsche “Box” things’ (Boxster has four unique tires….. the term “unique” is synonymous with “Ka Ching” in four digits; as I handed her my cell phone.
She waved it off as she flipped open and speed dialed her fancy phone. Smirking with just the right side of her mouth and raising that single famous eyebrow that every woman who is about to get her way can identify from across the street.
“Hi honey,” she said over excited to a voice that you know sounded harried and overworked and was afraid of what she was about to say in the middle of the day. “I’m here at the picture framers with the counted cross-stitch pictures I did for your mother and sister.” The hand is waving and the pace is stepping up. “ Unhuh . . . yeah. Oh yes, they look fabulous and if your sister doesn’t hang hers in a really great place, I’ll kill her and just hang it in our house. “ She prattled on playing him out. Why don’t we guys know when we’re being wound up?
“Well, that’s why I called, honey.” And the wind up is tight . . . and here’s the pitch, “well, it’s kind of expensive, but the framer is willing to make a trade.” The drum roll is low and to the outside, but coming into focus. You can just hear his gears turning. “Oh it’s one of those little cute cars. A little silver Porsche convertible . . . I think it called a Boxer?” And ladies and gentlemen, it’s a fly ball that never even looked down at the fence far below. She is GONE.
I can hear him screaming “just pay him. Put it all on the Visa, but just pay him. I don’t care how much you’re spending . . .” (yup, he says it again as she holds the phone out so I can hear.)” just pay him.”
Yes sir, some days it’s simply just the wife that is more expensive, but if you and she are good, then you will be lucky to last as long as a good frame job. And be as satisfied on that last day, as the day you bought it.
The truth is, good picture framing is the best investment you will ever make to put in your home. It will outlast the carpet and the hardwood floor, every electronic entertainment you will ever buy, appliances you will go through more than a few times and we won’t even go into cars and their tires. At the end of your life, if you took care of that nice frame, your grandkids will be fighting over it, and it can go to their grandkids, unless all you have are dogs and cats.
Just choose your picture framer like you would your investment broker, because they are both working to make the rest of your life a better place.
Interesting week these last two days; someone decided to park in the middle of a busy freeway last night about 10:40, and I was the idiot who stopped to see if they were alright. When the smell of burning rubber subsided, I figured out that they really had “just parked it” and walked away. (He said swearing under his breath). So that was the first part of the “Why do people do stupid things?”.
Then there was the “could you just look at this and tell me what you think you could do”. When someone uses the word “just” in the picture framing industry (and probably every other profession….. oh yeah, I can hear a few thousand heads vigorously nodding.), the red flags all go up, the flares are bursting in air, and there is a distinct siren going off. Unless it’s family; and thank gosh it wasn’t my wife… but close. So I stood there with a dour frown that was suitable to the large crack in the corner of the plastic $4 frame with the piece missing. ‘Do you think you could just like glue it or something and maybe stick some gold leaf on the area where the piece is missing unless you can fill that too…..”
And the little voice kept yelling “Run! Run while you can!”.
‘Let me see what I can do’ I almost heard myself say. But then the smell of burning rubber, and the sound of cars going sideways, and the vision of that scared young lady with the big “O” for a face as she was coming at me standing where an empty lane should have been…..
“Look, if you get another one, I’ll refit the picture for you next time I’m up.” The car swerved, I finished walking off to the side of the freeway, and the frame went back in the drawer.
Trees are expensive to cut down, and mill and then make into picture frame moulding, ship to America where some poor starving art student gets to chop and join it into a frame. The sand is cheap; it’s just when you have to heat it enough to make glass that it starts to get less cheap. Then you load it on an expensive truck that sucks diesel like my great niece drains her mother’s breast nine times a day. Then there is the rent, electric, fixtures, insurance, payroll, business licenses, permits and so many costs that it’s enough to make you switch from mother’s mild to something out of a bottle. But my point is that long before a customer asks for a custom picture frame, the framer is buried in debt, and supplies aren’t very cheap either. Then there is their education . . ..
So I truly understand where people who never or hardly ever shop for custom picture frames might think that $200 for a custom frame and framing for their family photo is expensive; but they’re wrong. Food is expensive. You can plop down $200 for food that won’t last till the end of the month; week if you have a teenager or two.
Tires are very expensive, especially if you leave a fair portion of the tread on the 405 freeway in the middle of the night; and very very very expensive if they don’t stop you in time. But even so, my cheap $500 tires will maybe last me for 3-4 years. Then what will they cost?
But a good quality fine framing job will outlast those tires, that car as well as the next several, certainly the food, the refrigerator and stove, the carpet or hardwood floors, every bit of clothing in your closet, and almost all of your furniture and still look as good as the day you bought it.
So with a great deal like that; why do they go and buy a cheap plastic sprayed gold and then when if falls off the wall and the corner breaks . . . act like it was an heirloom frame?
As a few outside my family, friends, and picture framers, conservators, curators . . . I think I’m up to at least fore-teen or more people in that group . . . know, I’ve been picture framing for over four decades, and a published writer for over two. Blending the different worlds in my life is something I have been doing since I was a twisted little boy trying on my sister’s tutu and wondering why my Tom Mix belt, holster and pistol didn’t fit so great. (The holster laid on top of the tutu and you couldn’t draw very fast.)
As you may have guessed, by now (and I wanted it to be upfront and very clear from the start), as I may be talking about serious stuff, and giving very real advise . . . you’re going to get subjected to my slightly warped humor as well. Probably what even keeps drawing me to the art and picture framing world/universe is the dichotomy that in even the serious arena of Museums and Conservation as well as Preservation of the social heart of the human society, there is a side that still doesn’t take itself too serious; and well it shouldn’t. Even Leo gave Mona a half smile.
Another side of my very personal view of art and it’s relationship with picture framing comes from the broth from my mother, some vegetables from “uncle” Bill Garnett the famous photo story teller, pepper from an interior designer named Ron Yates, a nice chopped up brisket from an uncle-ish mentor Norman Greenstone (who’s voice and stories/lessons I hear still almost weekly), and the salt from a fine lady and customer, Mrs. Ballard.
You see, it’s all about ‘the story’.
Customers don’t drag a picture they just happen to have laying about, down to a frame shop looking for a frame that they can hang on a nail in their house.
A person has a picture that tells a story. It has enough emotional meaning for them that they are driven to go out of their way to a picture framer, and willing to spend good money. They don’t want a frame . . . or they would have picked one up at the junk sale. The come to the framer, (hopefully that they know and trust), in need of help . . . to tell their emotional story better.
Unfortunately, in this world of “price” and “perceived savings”, there are the Big Box or Always on Sale companies with their Low Wages, Always Low Wages mentality that provides a reflecting quality of workmanship at best, and a lack of story telling at worst. ‘But it was 50% off!’, the cry resounds. Yup, and looks it too. But 50% of a highly inflated moving price is no bargain. In fact, it may be more expensive than what was really wanted and or needed. And if it turns your “trip of a lifetime” memory into just another hole filled on your wall, it’s just down right insulting to you and your pocket book.
Is there an answer? Yes, thankfully. Interview a few or more custom picture framers, and find one that you are really comfortable with. On a national average in American, you will be working with this person between 8 and 15 times. Make sure you like working with them, and they you.
Choosing a picture framer should IMHO, be right up there with finding “your” doctor, mechanic, plumber, funeral director, or lawyer. Seriously.
Cruise the Yellow Pages and get a feel for who you want to interview. Window shop them all. Go in the evening, just a drive-by. ‘Is the front window and door inviting?’ Does it invite you to stop and get a closer look?
Take note of the ones that you liked, and drive by during the day. Yes, you are stalking, but in this case it’s called “shopping”. Watch through the window the days activities and the framer interacting with customers and or employees. Take notes.
The final few are the ones you will actually go in to see. Take a picture along that “you are thinking about framing” and just wanted to get their ideas. NOT A QUOTE. Just ideas. You are just finding out if you want to examine working with this person again.
Do nothing with this final information for at least a week. You’re answer may surprise you, or it may just make you smile at what you felt or knew all along. But that is your framer. Enjoy, and tell loving stories that the rest of us get to hear.
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