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Janet Tod portrait
© Amanda Hancocks 2009. |
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Have you ever visited an exhibition and wondered "What on earth possessed them to choose that frame?" Or maybe you loved the frame but not the work. As an artist, one's heart plummets like a stone when the first words someone says are "I love your frame" or equally you overhear "pity about the framing". What about the work!?
A good frame should enhance and not detract from your work. It can be the difference between selling or not selling since most buyers of domestic pieces do not want the hassle of reframing. Where as today the fashion seems not to frame at all. So why should you choose to frame?
Framing is first and foremost to protect the work - especially works on paper which, by their very nature, are fragile. It can protect your work from damage especially if it is to be handled or sent in the post.
Without a frame it would not be practicable to hang certain works. Works on paper spring to mind as there would be nothing to screw the hanging fitting such as D-rings or mirror plates into.
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Framing is often susceptible to the vagaries of what is deemed fashionable. Once upon a time drawings, prints, photographs were always framed under glass with a bevel cut mount. These days it is common to choose a 'floating frame' or, in the case of photographs, to mount them on aluminium.
There are many professional framers throughout the UK and it is not possible to
recommend one over another. For a time I used to make my own frames - to the extent of buying a special mitre saw contraption and cutting my own bevel mounts. I kept at least one card manufacturer and timber merchant in business in the process.
A framer that sympathetically frames one's work is worth his/her weight in gold.
Janet Tod is a painter and Gallery Manager of The Kowalsky Gallery at DACS. She lives and works in London and exhibits regularly throughout the UK and internationally.
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