My talented husband

To coincide with my Highcliffe exhibition, today we ran a workshop at the studio showing how my beautiful picture frames are made by my husband Richard. When we first met I taught him how to picture frame, although not much tuition was needed as he was already very practical and this has now grown as part of the many services we offer at my studio.
What he hadn't allowed for, was that one day I might ask him to pass that knowledge on to anyone who might be interested and so this workshop was born.

It was important today to pass on the amount of work that goes in to picture framing and the hours that it takes to compliment the art work. Richard goes further by also reclaiming wood for the mouldings as I prefer natural woods such as oak and cherry, and profiles them in to lengths that can be used to show off the subjects that I choose to paint.

I don't think people were prepared for the amount of accurate maths that's involved either, as Richard showed how to calculate the dimensions of a mount and cut clean bevels on our mount cutter before demonstrating how to prepare work for a browser or to fit in to a ready made frame.

However, everyone went home with greater knowledge of what is required to finish off the hard work that goes in to creating a work of art and many were able to cut their own mounts, impressed at how much better their paintings looked after framing.

I think Richard surprised himself a little too, it wasn't obvious that he hadn't taught before and many of the class remarked on how he shared his knowledge with ease. Now to teach him how to paint...