Cherille

Picture arrived safely in Australia on Monday. They are thrilled with it. All our efforts were more than worthwhile. Thank you again, so much, for your kind and efficient attention and seeing the transaction successfully through to the end.

Ken Marsh

Sent: January 17th, 2011
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Cherille,

Thank you for this. I am posting a cheque for £336.79 today, Monday, and look forward to hearing that the picture has arrived safely in Australia. I want to thank you most warmly for all your efforts in this transaction. You have served us very well indeed and do very much appreciate. As I have said before we are impressed by your efficiency and speed of attention. We salute you.

With many thanks again,

Ken Marsh
Bleadon Hill
Weston-super-Mare

I have been attending The London School of Musical Theatre this past year and today is my last day.

Every day for the past year, I have walked from London Bridge, past your shop, down to Borough – where the school is. And I just wanted to say that I think your paintings are absolutely beautiful.

I always look in when I walk past and they always cheer me up when I’m feeling down. One day, when I save up enough, I am going to buy one so I can have it on my wall and always remember the fantastic year I’ve had.

Thank you again for your inspiring paintings!

Love from [named removed to preserve identity]

If you are in a gallery which has a framing service as well as a showroom there could be even more confusion as the range will be even more extensive. If when you look around at the pictures for sale and you feel they are really complemented by the frames then you can have faith in the advice which you are given on your artwork. The assistant can visualize the final framing where perhaps you cannot; after all they see all the framing jobs as they come from the workshop.

1) Unless your artwork is of little value my advice would be don’t go for a clipframe which is the cheapest method of getting your picture on the wall (other than blue-tack, drawing pins or sellotape of course!) They are not airtight and can let damp, humidity and even small insects in between the layers. I have many times seen the actual top layer of paper nibbled almost bare by hungry bugs or by mould. If on the other hand you want something temporary on your walls in student digs or such for a limited time then fine, needs must.

2)Remember that you will not always live where you do now so don’t say ‘everything in my room is black or my walls are yellow, so I can’t have such or such a colour’. If yellow enhances you picture and looks just perfect, it makes sense to go with the picture not the colour of the walls. Odds are that one day when you move you will regret allowing sameness and matching be your criteria.

3)Have an open mind and take an interest in what is being suggested and shown to you. You are not beholden to go along with anything but some pictures can be made exciting in ways you probably would never have thought of yourself. I have put 4″ wide mouldings on postcards with no mount right to the image and they have ended up a decorator’s ‘dream piece’.

4)You will make life much easier for yourself if you resist taking in a frame from years ago which you would like to match. Fashions change in framing as does everything else.
If you want a matching pair choose a complementry frame and reframe the old one to match. Metallic extrusion aluminium was very popular once but not now. Thinner the better was ‘in’ once but likewise not now.

5)Have in your mind ‘where and what with’ you intend to hang your picture. Today they are clumped together in a focal point and not spaced evenly around the room at eye-level. Paint a nice big square on the wall in a vibrant colour and frame your work to hang within it. I like silver frames on navy blue and black on terracotta for instance.

Footnote: If whilst you are at the framer’s you were to hear another customer say “I’ll just leave this framing job with you, can’t hang about – just ring me when they’re ready and they cost what they cost” then you know you are in good hands as that is a repeat customer for sure just going out the door!

Ever wondered how high to hang your pictures?

Well remember most pictures are designed to be viewed at eye-level. A good framer will have dropped the mount at the bottom by 20-25% to ground the frame and to compensate for the eye tricking you into thinking the picture is tilting forward. When hanging a group of pictures of different sizes align the top edges to some overall design. You do not have to have symmetry but some order.
I often like to paint a large square of a vibrant colour and arrange matching frames (often black on vibrant terracotta or silver frames on navy blue for instance). You can try arranging your frames on the floor in a pattern before you start hanging.

This oil on canvas of London sky-line was her first effort of the day. I see butterflies being drawn on the next canvas of the day. Did I get enough canvases in to keep this wonderwoman occupied all week?

Gabriella Kovago at work in New City Gallery

Introducing Gabriella Kovago painting while our resident artist is home in Australia on holiday.

Gabriella’s first love is theatrical costume design but she is an accomplished artist in all mediums.

Aged twenty nine and Hungarian by birth she has worked in U.S.A, the Netherlands and been in London two months.

Here is her first attempt at a London landscape and one in progress.

The more unusual, the more we like it. New City Gallery took an order once for a long nail embedded in a piece of pipe for framing. The story goes that the mishap cost the customer a great deal of money when he flooded his neighbour below with said nail. He wanted to have it hung prominently as a reminder!

Cricket bats, coins, sports-shirts, medals etc. are all routine so try to stump us if you can.

A big boon to our reputation as framers has been our two dry-mounting presses which allow us to take on much larger items for exhibitions etc. which other framers would have to turn down.

It might come as a surprise that the wall you have destined to hang the picture on comes into the equation. A large picture would be fitted in the workshop with ’strap hangers’ automatically unless the customer had been asked about the wall and the workshop subsequently instructed that a ’split-batten’ was necessary to spread the weight.

If your piece of art was very expensive to purchase you will want the best treatment for it to preserve that investment.
You may need full light protection and therefore U.V. repellent glass. You will be advised to have a mount to keep the glass off the artwork in this case with the use of acid free materials throughout including the backboard. However a print or poster can be treated differently and thereby more cheaply.