Preparing the items for inclusion in my South Square exhibition in April I have come across a very frustrating problem. Bearing in mind the expense of commissioning new frames for pictures, I have tried to get into the habit over the years of re-cycling frames. If there is an image which I believe that I no longer wish to exhibit, or which can be granted an extended holiday, I store the frame on a rack in the cellar, awaiting a new tenant. I’ve never counted how many of these I now have in stock, but there is a fair number of them.
One of the recent items I have done, after a long period of reflection and alteration, now convinces me that it is ready for inclusion in the forthcoming exhibition, so I have been looking to see if I can find a frame that will suit the purpose. (To commission a new one for an item this size would cost around £100.) I thought that I had found a good candidate, and managed to cut a new mount for it with respectable precision. When I assembled everything together, however, it was immediately evident that it just would not do. Within about ten minutes of my thinking I had finished the job my wife let me know in no uncertain terms that it was no good. The margins of the mount were …. well …. wrong! So I need to get another frame.
By good fortune, as we drove through the neighbouring town of Otley this afternoon, on the way back from the monthly meeting of the regional Italian Circle, she spotted one of the charity shops with a good selection of second-hand frames in its window.* It was far from convenient to stop at that point, but I will be back in Otley on Monday morning, combing the charity shops for a suitable second-hand frame.
*When it comes to charity shops my wife has an eye like a hawk. It seems that she can survey the contents of the window from a moving vehicle, in a snow storm, at thirty paces.