Chronicles

2009 Trends
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The art of framing
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One painting, two mouldings
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Framing Posters
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Reconsider Your Framing

Once upon a time, in many Quebec houses, the family photographs were found on the wall, gathered together, well in sight in the entrance. The medley look of this set-up that was carried out over several years, often gave a “patchwork” effect. Thus, the photographs aligned on the wall reminded people all these beautiful years spent in family, looking at their descendants grow up. The trouble was often around the image. The “vintage” effect was striking us head-on and making us realize, that in framing like elsewhere, tendency varies from time to time.

Older people and their children will certainly remember these beautiful frames made of brown wood, carved in the colonial style of the end of the sixties or the beginning of the seventies. They were very popular, perhaps too much. Then came those years of metal frames; at the opposite of their predecessors, they aimed to be slim, light and discrete. Then, to go on, it has been the time for the lacquered moulding, in various formats and various colours, from black to white as well as pink to grey. And I get over the years of the laminated plaques.

Now, let us imagine our family or holidays photographs wall with all these combinations.  If I tell you all that today, it’s that I recently had to take up a challenge to frame again years of photographs for one of our customers. I acknowledge that the exercise was very pleasant. 

The first question was: is this still in style to gather the family photographs or several frameworks on a wall? The answer is yes. Obviously, there is a way to brighten up these groupings. Today, people have various ways of gathering their frameworks, some are very structured, others less. Some go from the floor to the ceiling others are limited to the height of the eyes. At a certain time, the groupings were horizontal over the furniture. Today, vertical groupings are seen around the furniture like if they were wrapping them. In fact, there is more freedom and more creativity when comes time for hanging. 

But let’s come back to our challenge of photographs I had to frame in today’s style. On the same wall we could find family photographs of great-grandparents in sepia, grandparents in black and white, parents in a little faded colours, children in kind of “Sears” photographs and some wedding photographs of the years 2000. Fortunately, there were no yet great-great-grandchildren, but let’s not despair, that will surely come!

My suggestion was to digitize all the photographs and to print them in black and white of different sizes. To frame them, I used a double mat and a classic silver and black round moulding. The use of non-glare glass also made it possible to install the photographs on a wall facing a large bow window without any unpleasant reflection.

Now, in addition of having the originals safely stored for the future generations, they have a CD and they can make additional copies for their children. The wall became the family story and a piece of conversation for everyone. Not being able to show you a picture of the family photographs I framed, I present you an example of a grouping of travel photographs hung between a kitchen and a dining room.

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