An inherited painting usually arrives with a frame that is somewhere between charming and actively harmful, and the two are not mutually exclusive. A beautiful old frame very often contains exactly the materials that are damaging the work inside it.
The good news is that this splits cleanly. The frame is nearly always worth keeping. What is inside it nearly always is not.
Signs the frame is damaging the artwork
Any of these means open it now rather than later.
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A brown line around the edge of the image, following the shape of the mat. This is acid burn from the board. It is happening continuously.
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Yellowing or brittleness in the paper, particularly at the edges.
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Waviness or cockling in a work on paper. The sheet is restrained and cannot move.
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Any tape visible at the edges or corners. Ordinary tape stains permanently.
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Fogging or bloom on the inside of the glass. Moisture is getting in.
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Speckling, grey or brown, which is mould.
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The artwork touching the glass with no mat or spacer between them.
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Corrugated cardboard as the backing. Highly acidic and it prints its ridges into the sheet.
What to keep
The frame, almost always
Old mouldings are frequently better made than new ones and often cannot be reproduced. Worn gilding with the red bole showing through is desirable, not damage. Keep it, and resist the urge to touch it up: a patched repair looks far worse than honest wear.
What does need attention is structural. Loose corner joints should be re-secured, and any nails driven into the rebate come out.
Anything written on the back
Labels, exhibition stickers, inscriptions, dealer marks, old framer's labels. These are the painting's history and they can matter a great deal to its provenance. If a backing board has a label on it, we photograph it, and where possible the label itself is kept with the piece rather than discarded.
Never clean, peel, or tidy the back of an old painting before someone has looked at it.
What to replace
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All board. Mat and backing, both, to conservation grade.
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All tape and adhesive. Replaced with reversible hinges. See acid-free mats and backing.
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The glazing, usually. Old glass has no UV filtering, and a piece that has already been damaged by light should not be given another few decades of it.
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The hardware. Old wire fatigues, old screws loosen. It is the cheapest part of the job and the one that prevents the worst outcome.
- The dust seal.
The one thing that cannot be undone
If the work has been dry mounted or glued to a board, that is permanent. The sheet is bonded to its mount and separating them is specialist conservation work that is expensive, risky, and sometimes impossible.
It is not a reason to despair. A dry-mounted piece can still be reframed properly and will still last, and the mount at least keeps it flat. But it does affect the value of an original, and it is worth knowing rather than discovering later. It is also the reason we will not dry mount anything. See our conservation framing standards.
How we handle a reframe
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We open it and look before quoting anything, because until the back is off nobody knows what is in there.
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We tell you what we found, including when the answer is that it is fine and needs nothing. That happens more often than you might expect.
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We stop if we find something that changes the job, such as mould, dry mounting, or damage hidden under the mat. Nothing further happens without you agreeing to it.
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We keep what should be kept, photograph the back, and preserve any labels.
Opening a frame to look is a short job and it is the only way to answer the question. If you are in Vancouver, bring it to the gallery at 1242 Davie Street.
If the painting itself needs work
Framing and conservation are different trades. Flaking paint, tears, water damage, discoloured varnish, and mould in the fibres are a conservator's work, not a framer's. We will say so and we will not attempt it. What we can do is stabilise the housing so nothing gets worse while you decide.
Common questions
Will reframing reduce the value of an inherited painting?
Correct reframing protects value. Where it can reduce value is if an original period frame is discarded, or if labels and inscriptions on the back are lost. Both are avoidable, which is why we keep the frame and photograph the back.
Can you match a frame for a set of old pictures?
Often, closely enough that they read as a pair or a set. Bring one in, or send photographs of the corner and of the profile from the side. Exact matches to a discontinued moulding are uncommon; close ones usually are not.
How old does a frame have to be before it is worth checking?
About twenty years is a reasonable trigger, because conservation materials only became normal in general framing relatively recently. Anything framed before then is likely to have ordinary board in it, and the damage that matters is happening behind the mat where you cannot see it.
Should I remove an old painting from its frame myself?
Not unless you know exactly how it is currently attached. Some older pieces are nailed directly through the stretcher into the frame's rebate, and forcing it out without releasing those points first can crack the paint or damage the frame's mitres. Bring it in as it is and let us open it carefully.
What should I do with labels or writing found on the back of an old painting?
Leave them exactly where they are and photograph them before anything is touched. Gallery labels, exhibition stickers, and handwritten notes on the back can matter for provenance, and once removed or covered they are difficult to recover. We photograph the reverse of every reframing job before starting work for this reason.
Is it normal for an old canvas to feel loose in its stretcher?
Yes, fairly common on a piece of any age, since canvas relaxes gradually over decades. A specialist can often re-tension it using the stretcher's own keys, small wedges at the inside corners, without removing the canvas from its frame at all. Severe slackness needs a full re-stretch, which is a specialist job and a much larger undertaking than re-tensioning.
Can a damaged old frame be repaired instead of replaced?
It depends on the damage, and it is worth asking before you replace anything. A loose joint or a chipped corner is often repairable. A frame that has failed structurally throughout is usually replaced with a close period-appropriate match instead. Bring the piece in to 1242 Davie Street, or send photographs of the corners and of the profile from the side, and we will tell you which of the two you are looking at.
How long does reframing an inherited painting usually take?
It depends on what is found once the old frame is opened. A straightforward swap of the mat, backing and glazing can be quick, while a piece needing conservation attention to the canvas or paper itself takes longer, since that work is scheduled separately from the framing. We give a realistic estimate once we have seen what is actually there.
