Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

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Mr_Moose
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Organisation: Sigmund & Jocelyn Fine Art
Interests: Paintings and drawings 1800-1950

Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Mr_Moose »

Hello, I'm Mr Moose and when I more or less retired from my job a few months ago I started a business dealing mainly in nineteenth century paintings and prints and drawings. I've had to learn the basics of framing, in order to reframe my paintings and drawings as they are sometimes in a frightful state/horribly framed when I get them. It's very early days for me, as until this week I had only needed to frame 5 pictures. This week, however, an artist friend has given me 6 through to 13 to get on with, which is of course nice, but a bit challenging, too - she wants most of them to have white frames...

I've managed to avoid framing at least two of them in white by finding a hardwood tray moulding, which has joined very well - lovely 3 mm edge which suits the artwork well. My problem is now how to secure the artwork to the frame. Unfortunately, my excellent tutor on the course I went to on framing oil paintings only prepared me for securing stretched canvas - nice and easy with eyes and screws. But these paintings are on 4mm commercial artists' board, so screwing things into it doesn't seem quite the way forward. It's a 7.5 mm rebate so I can pack the frame with 3.5mm Foam-lite to make the edges flush, and I suppose I could glue the Foam-lite to the return of the frame, and then glue the back of the artwork to the Foam-lite, but it strikes me there is probably a more elegant solution. Any suggestions gratefully received!
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Keith Hewitt
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Keith Hewitt »

44 people have looked at this post and none replied so far :?: I wonder why.

Maybe they are thinking you need quite a bit of help, maybe more than you realise.

Help is at hand.....

http://www.hedgehog-art.co.uk/

You are in Brum, Roy Rowlands is in Bromsgrove.

I believe Roy will come to you, so you get trained on your kit, or of course you can go to him.

Suggest you give him a call.

It will not be a cost ....it will be an investment :o

Good luck
Keith Hewitt
I have visited distributors and framers in 90 countries - no two are the same.
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prospero
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by prospero »

Welcome Mr.Moose. :D

I read your post last night and was a little confused, but now I have had a kip the penny has dropped. :idea: :clap:

This is a perennial problem. Thing is, the style of frame you have chosen is at odds with framing 'fine art'. OK for laminated prints and such, but original artwork...... dodgy. As you have observed, there is no easily reversible way of securing the work. Gluing is just about the only option and gluing things to original work is not really the thing to do. If the artist's intention was to have the work framed in this manner (nothing wrong with it from a purely aesthetic point of view), then they would have to think ahead and use a board thick enough to allow screws to be inserted from the back. The artist might even glue bits of wood to the back. That's OK, it counts as preparation. If anyone else does it later it counts as mutilation. It matters not how well

Not that that helps you a great deal. :?

If you simply must do them this way then double-sided foam tape is about the best way. It's very sticky and lasts a long while and being foam it has a certain amount of 'give' which helps prevent the glue bond failing due to minute movements between the two surfaces. But sooner or later it's going to fail and when it does you never know what damage is going to occur. You wouldn't lose much sleep over a cheap poster, but an original work.....
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Mr_Moose
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Mr_Moose »

Thank you, Prospero - that's been really helpful! I've got a certain amount of latitude, and your comment about artists gluing wooden supports to the back is what I'll probably run with - after all there's 4mm between the glue and the paint... I've taken apart that number of oils and watercolours over the past few months where the picture looks so much more "complete" out of frame/mount than in that it makes me think most artists, whether long-dead or contemporary, didn't give a lot of thought to the framing side of things at all, unless and until they developed a working relationship with a framer. As a matter of interest, does anyone on the forum know when framers started to use tray frames and so display the entire surface?
Roboframer

Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Roboframer »

Welcome to the forum, Mr Moose!

I think tray frames are what we know as floater frames, but yes, it looks like the thing is sitting in a tray so a tray frame is more self-explanatory really.

Not sure of the history of these things but the first things I ever saw along the lines were things from the sixties, never anything valuable, but there would be a small normal (well, usually aluminium wrapped wood) frame around the artwork, that would be fixed to a hessian-backed board with about 3 inches of it showing and then sat back in one of these floater type frames - grotesque!

I think, and I could be wrong, that the resurgence in this style has come from the photography world - maybe boxed canvasses (or 'gallery wraps') as well. It gives a means of quick and cheap display with no glass and flumbs to worry about, also no mounts and other things associated with normal frames - especially picture framers :(

I'm a fan of glazing oils etc on canvas and especially on board and especially valuable or even 'nice' pieces on either. You can't have glass with these floater frames, well, not easily at all anyway .... and when anyone says they don't like the look of glass I show them my 'invisible glass' comparison displays ....

"How about THIS glass then"? (Tap Tap!)

"What glass"?

"Exactly"!

Then I ask them what they'd rather clean, a piece of glass or a painting, which could be more a case of 'pay to have cleaned'.
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IFGL
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by IFGL »

Well Mr. Roboframer has hit the nail on the head for me.

I do understand that all of the painting is on display with got these tray frames, but does 5mm of lost painting make any difference, usually not.

But so does blue tacking it to the wall and drawing a biro line round it, and about as much thought and imagination has gone into it.

About as atractive.as a clip frame.

Looks cheep but isn't.
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IFGL
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by IFGL »

Oops, welcome to the forum Moose, ignore me.
Mr_Moose
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Mr_Moose »

Many thanks, Roboframer & IFGL - much food for thought, and I think I will play safe and talk it through with the artist first, on Monday when she comes to collect her white goods....
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IFGL
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by IFGL »

my post made no sense what so ever, it was made after a pint of beer and half a bottle of single malt :D.
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prospero
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by prospero »

I've just done a tray frame. :?

It was an order from a gallery. They had a biggish canvas - about 40x50". Modern cityscape. Skyscrapers and all that. It had been painted on unstretched canvas and the paint went nearly to the edge. The gallery owner had sold the painting and the customer wanted it hanging on the wall as a gallerywrap canvas. Yeah but not but..... To wrap the edges on a decent depth stretcher meant loosing at least 6" off the image size. They were resigned to losing a bit but that was too much. So I suggested a compromise of using a tray frame. Then I could staple into the sides and loose about 3" or less. Next step - making custom bars. They needed to be expandable. I used two-way bar stock (with the slots) and cut extra big ply trangles for the corners. It stretched surprisingly well. The thing is with tray frames where you want it quite snug, the canvas has to be dead square. The bigger the canvas, the harder it is to do this. But I got it as square as it had any right to be. Made the tray out of bare obeche and painted black.
The upshot was that it doesn't look bad - from a distance. The gap on one side is a tad wider than the other and you can see staples if you look hard enough. The tray frame is weaker than the stretcher bars so it had slightly bowed. Not a lot. Maybe 2mm.

All in all I find tray frames a big faff. If the canvas is square and edges neat it's fairly easy. If not it's a PITA. :Slap:
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Mr_Moose
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by Mr_Moose »

Thank you, Keith, and I'll bear your suggestion about Roy in Bromsgrove in mind. I'm really glad that I've joined this forum - just a couple of days has given me a lot of help with not only the unknown knowns (how to finish white joins, for example!) but my evidently known unknown (how to float an artist's prepared board).
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DEEPJOY
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Re: Greetings from Mr Moose, and a question

Post by DEEPJOY »

Deepjoy Moose and welcome to the forum :clap:

Welcome indeed to all the newbies I have missed out on wishing all the best to over the past months.

The only advise I can give is - to keep in touch with yourselves and try not be put off by some customers lack of interest in the art of framing.Your enthusiasim is all that matters :rock:
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