Like all occupations and professions, picture framing has its own specific terms, vocabulary, taxonomy and nomenclature.  This is not surprising considering that one of the oldest picture frames ever made  was  found in Egypt and is thought to  date back to at least  2,500 years ago.  So far as Australia goes, at least some, picture frames, picture framing  workers and artisans first arrived to Australia with the coming of the 1st Fleet in way back in 1788.  Inheriting from the traditions  of the mother country, Australians both borrowed and inherited the British picture framing vocabulary form the old country.  One of these was the locution of a specific component of a picture frame, namely the ... 

We have been picture framing for close to half a century and we have come across much disinformation and many fallacies where custom picture framing is concerned. Perhaps the most persistent fallacy is the widespread and popular misconception that glazing ( the covering of framed artwork with a transparent or see-though material ) with 'Plastic Glass', 'Perspex' , 'Plexiglass', a clear plastic, or an acrylic pane  is  a cheaper more convenient and better alternative than glazing  with clear float glass.  Alas, and in our lengthy and not inconsiderable  experience ...

Why write about picture frame backing boards?  Truth be known, we were scratching for ideas for this month's post. We asked the lads for suggestions for a new post but most told us that they felt that we must have written just about everything there is to know about picture frames. And that seemed to be so until someone asked about backing boards, had we ever written anything about them? The answer was in the negative, and do, here we go, let's discuss backing boards, the kinds used in picture framing to make picture frames.  To begin with, and so far as the picture framing occupation is concerned, backing boards, backer boards, back boards, backs and and backings are all synonyms of the same ...

Yes, " What’s inside a picture frame? is one of the questions we get asked fairly frequently.  The wording of the question can change from person to person but Customers want to know the same thing.  And this is because they are curious of the components of a frame and the  names of the parts of  a picture frame.  We may get asked:“What do you put at the back?” , or: “What will you put my picture on?” and even: “Will you make something so that my picture won’t fall off?”, and so on and so forth. The reason this question gets asked is because people know that a thin piece of paper like a poster can’t hold up by itself and wonder what and how it is being ...

We sell a fair few shadow boxes all over Australia and we find that most Customers know what a 3-Dimensional Shadow box is, how it is made and what it can be used for. But once or twice a month we receive phone call inquiries from "newbies".  These newcomers want to know what a shadow box is and can they use it to put  what they want inside it.  As these types of box picture frames are a little complicated, have multiple components with size limitations, clearances, depth limits, etc, it can be a little difficult to precisely explain and convey all these aspects to Customers on the telephone, hence this post.  To begin with, we don't  really know for sure how ... 

Most Customers with an interest or passion in home décor, and more particularly, the picture framing and display of art on paper, such as photos, prints, posters and the like, will probably already know what is a window mat  (or window mount  or passé-partout as it is known in Europe)  when researching window mat designs . However for those who may not be fine art aficionados, a window mat is paper or cardboard edge one often sees around many of the nicer photos or images. It creates a separate field of colour, definition and light, between the picture frame and the art itself. More prosaically, it keeps the glass off and away from touching the art ...

A Brief Tour of Window Mats and Their Openings. In this blog we will try to shed some light on Window Mats and Their Openings, with a particular focus to their external and internal sizing. A window mat ( Customers often call them edges, cardboards, surrounds, masks, etc ) or a window mount, as our English brethren would call one is that white or coloured cardboard that framers often put around images and inside picture frames. Broadly speaking, window mats are placed over and around images for several ...