Moglet wrote:One of the things that blows me away about your work, Mark, is that you can design such beautiful mouldings "from a standing start."
Hi Áine,
They're not as designed as you think! They kind of evolve and the ideas come from a combination of things. It's a bit like a journey, which started when I first visited the NEC Spring fair, perhaps about eight to ten years ago and watch Pete Bingham hand-finishing mouldings.
I was hooked from that moment, but at that time was not involved in picture framing at any serious level at all. I started getting moulding and equipment catalogues and the seed was sown.
It was years before anything further happened, but all my best ideas are geared to copying something classy and expensive loking that I've seen and would like to do cheaper, (That is cheaper to me!). Things went up a gear after spending a week training with Pete Bingham.
I've got a big box of old fashioned moulding samples, some cut from frames bought from charity shops, some from auctions, some real Italian hand finished ones, etc. It helps to see and handle things, to look through the finish and try and work out how it was done.
In a nut shell, I try and copy what I like, for profit. Things don't necessarily come out exactly as I expected, so I learn things and some which work differently become my way of doing it. I started of at a much less upmarket level, but it's only practice, practice and more practice. You'll get there too!
Moglet wrote: For the little bit of handfinished work I've done, it has been driven (inspired?) by the need of the item being framed, and not being able to find a moulding to complement it adequately. Perhaps that's what made me an effective design engineer/project manager: come to me with a problem, and the problem itself will provide me with the inspiration/impetus for a solution. My creativity seems to require an external spark. As I look at the fruits of the internal creative genius of others on the forum, I kinda feel like a fraud (but in a good way
).
You are already on the way and you're not a fraud. It just seen difficult to know where to start. So get as many moulding catalogues as you can, spend time with them, look for ideas, cost them and start trying. Pick as many brains as you can on the forum and go for it.
Too many hand-finished frames look loud and showy. Yours look very subtle and understated. Pure class.
