Any framer can list what they offer. What tells you more is what they turn down. These are the standards we work to, and they are the same whether the piece cost a few hundred dollars or a few thousand.
Every one of them comes back to a single test: can the next person undo what we did? Framing is temporary. Paintings outlive frames, and they outlive framers. Anything we do that cannot be reversed has taken a decision away from someone who is not in the room yet.
What we always do
Conservation board throughout
Acid-free and lignin-free mat board and backing on everything on paper, as standard, not as an upgrade. Cotton rag where the piece warrants it. No ordinary card, and no corrugated cardboard anywhere in the package.
Hinge, never mount
Works on paper are hinged at the top edge with Japanese tissue and starch paste or conservation tape, and are free at the sides and bottom so the sheet can move with the room. Nothing is glued down, and nothing is dry mounted.
Keep the glazing off the art
A mat or a spacer on every glazed piece, so nothing rests against the surface. On a float mount, where the whole sheet is visible, a spacer does the job the mat would have done.
UV filtering as the default
On anything light-sensitive, UV-filtering glazing is where we start, not where we upsell to. We will tell you when it is not needed, which is most canvases.
Cut to the piece
Measured in millimetres, both diagonals checked, because stretcher bars are rarely perfectly square. Nothing is squeezed into a size it does not fit.
Hardware rated above the weight
Fitted at two points, never one, and sized for the finished package rather than for the artwork alone. Over about 9 kg we specify a cleat or a fixing into a stud.
Seal the back
A dust seal on every glazed frame, and a backing board on canvases where it makes sense. It costs very little and it stops the slow accumulation nobody notices.
What we will not do
Dry mount or glue an original
This is the one we refuse outright. Dry mounting bonds a sheet permanently to a board. It cannot be undone, it ends the work's life as an original object, and no amount of it looking flat and neat is worth that. If a piece is badly cockled, the answer is correct hinging and time, not adhesive.
Use pressure-sensitive tape near artwork
No masking tape, no cellophane tape, no packing tape, no self-adhesive corners. They all fail the same way: the carrier falls off and the adhesive stays as a hard brown stain in the fibres.
Trim a work to fit a frame
Not by a millimetre. If the piece does not fit the frame, the frame is wrong.
Seal an oil painting airtight against glass
An oil film continues to cure and exchange with the air for years. If a canvas genuinely has to be glazed, it is done with a deep spacer and a package that is not airtight. See do oil paintings need glass.
Put acrylic over pastel or charcoal
Acrylic builds a static charge that lifts loose pigment off the paper and onto the glazing. Glass, always, with a deep spacer.
Sell you glazing you do not need
Museum-grade glazing is the most profitable line on a framing quote and the easiest to justify with vague talk about protection. It buys visibility, not extra protection over conservation glazing. If your picture is not facing a light source, we will say so. See museum glass vs conservation glass.
What this looks like in practice
When a work on paper comes in, the package is built in this order: conservation backing board, the artwork hinged to it at the top edge, the window mat or spacer, then the glazing, then the whole thing into the rebate, sealed, and fitted with hardware. Every material in contact with the artwork is conservation grade, and every join is reversible.
It is not complicated and it is not slow. It is simply the difference between framing and putting something in a frame.
Where our standards come from
Years of framing original work, in-house, at our gallery on Davie Street in Vancouver. Most of what is on this page we learned by opening old frames and seeing what the last framer did. The refusals above are not theoretical; each one is something we have had to explain to an owner after finding it.
Do these standards cost more?
Conservation board over ordinary board is a small difference on most jobs, and hinging correctly takes no longer than doing it badly. The genuine cost difference in framing is size and glazing, not conservation practice. See custom framing cost.
Will you frame something to a lower standard if I ask?
On a poster or a reproduction, of course, and we will say so plainly. On an original, no. We will explain what we would do and why, and if the budget will not stretch, we will cut the cost somewhere that does not touch the artwork, usually the moulding.
Can you check a frame I already have?
Yes, and it is worth doing on anything framed more than about twenty years ago. We open it, tell you what is in there, and stop before doing anything you have not agreed to. Often the answer is that it is fine.
