Framing biz changes and grows over time: take a look back at a quarter century of custom picture framing through the eyes of a veteran of the business - shop talk - a history of picture framing - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Art Business News, March, 2002 by Helen Kane

I became a picture framer in the late 1970s when limited-edition prints were just becoming a more important part of the industry. Framers learned skills on the job from co-workers and employers and by reading industry magazines for design ideas and new directions. The new news was "conservation," something that we were not really addressing yet.

Most of our framing was of certificates and family photographs. Our clients were price-conscious, and we offered to let them frame in our shop to save fitting charges and gave them a discount on their frames. Our frames were assembled on a corner miter vise with hammer and nails. Mats were cut to size with a big, table-mounted paper cutter like the little ones our teachers used in grade school. Our mat cutter was a Keeton Kutter, the first of the commercially available straight line mat cutters.

Our sample display of less than 100 corner samples included a few aluminum frames, a few frames, tiny and large, and a lot of one-inch wood finishes plus a few gilt profiles. We had one rack of mat samples which included a few shades of white and off-white in acid-free boards. We offered the great new innovation of non-glare glass as a premium product, and while some balked at the increased cost, eventually people began asking for this product.

We ordered about once a month and sent our truck to pick up the mat board, supplies and moulding from our local supplier. We picked up 100 sheets of mat at a time, keeping a stock of four sheets of each of the 75 colors that were available. Moulding was usually in 50-foot increments. We carried only length moulding and cut all our own wood and metal frames because chops had net yet been offered to us as an option. When distant moulding companies called upon us, we ordered 2,000 feet at a time, 50 to 150 feet per profile, to get to the free freight discounts. One of the great things about having materials in stock was there was little problem with lot variation. If the stock came in looking a bit different than the last time, we barely grumbled. We just made a new corner sample and moved on.

There were no toll-free numbers and no help lines, but my boss was a member of the McCormick Club. This group was a framers' roundtable that was the predecessor of the Evergreen Picture Framer's Guild, to which I belong, and the model for a group in California that eventually began the PPFA.

By the mid-1980s we were spending so much time with customers attempting to guide them to perfection that we decided to focus more on custom framing. As custom frames became our major product, the industry changed too. We were offered chop service, allowing us to show new lines of more expensive framing materials without the monetary risk that buying length entailed. Customers started hearing about the new acid-free materials that were increasingly available in colors and began listening with more interest to the benefits and even asking for conservation framing on their limited-edition prints.

When our clients began to travel more and were exposed to more dramatic framing in the galleries of California, Hawaii and European museums, we found their price resistance diminished significantly. We began showing multiple frames, wider mats with fillets and even multiple fillets. By the time premium glass options like optically coated and ultraviolet filtering became available, our clients were ready for them.

Now ultraviolet filtering glass is a product the consumers have heard of and request, along with the conservation quality mats that have become our standard offering.

Helen Kane is a 25-year, award-winning veteran of the framing business. She got her start as a trainee at Anabel's Framing Gallery in Everett, Wash., and returned after an absence of several years. She has sat on the board of the PPFA and is currently a member of her local chapter.