The Framers Forum

A customer brought this in to see if I could do something similar and how much it would cost. Its a little crafty but I think a lot of effort has gone into making it.
The inner and outer mouldings are hand finished in metal leaf, the middle flat decorated sections are covered in perspex or acrylic, the green painted corners are decorated with gold pen lines, then the butterfly/flower middle panels look to be basically cut from lithograph type prints and then over painted with white paint. These are done in four strips as little pieces of gold painted fillet cover the mitre joins of the paper, the green corners and pictures all seem to be on one piece of paper/material.

I've got a pretty good idea how I would do a similar frame, but wondered if anyone knew who made it?

Is there any info on the back side of the frame? (labels etc?)

My gut feeling is that this is an Asian import for the decorator market.

I don't know where they came from, but I have seen that sort of thing before, mostly in antique shops in and around the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire and places like Shepton Mallet.

They are probably quite easy to make, but not particular economic to do, except in reasonably sized batches. The mitres in the perspex would be easy to do on a Morso, but only if like me you have a hot plate for warming the perspex before chopping it. Chopping cold perspex = bad idea!

I frequently make up bits for object framing using perspex. For me it's very convenient, as the hardware shop across the road sells it in 2mm and 4mm thick and will cut it to size at a very favorable price.

If you warm it up first, you can get away with all sorts of machining methods that you would not normally expect. Large radius cut-outs can be made using woodworking auger bits if you drill slowly with a piece of wood underneath the perspex.

Gentle bending and forming of heated perspex is also possible. Tighter bends are not a good idea as there is a significant risk of weakness being generated by internal stresses.

No makers label or any information on the back. But now you say it, it does have an imported look about it. I will do a quote and if that doesn't scare the customer away, I will make a sample of how I would do a similar looking frame.