Are Gold Picture Frames Still in Fashion?
Let’s begin with a simple statement: Gold picture frames are simply fabulous. And are gold picture frames still in fashion? Absolutely!
And of course, the marriage between this amazing substance and the human condition happened thousand of years ago. Today, in our 5-storey Soho workshop we continue the fascination with this material by applying it to our fabulous picture frames. And yes, gold frames are extremely fashionable. Styles of gold frames do change over time. For example, go to the National Gallery in London’s West End (one of our favourite hangouts) and look at the frames there. Probably 90% or more are gold or are accented in gold. These mostly antique gold frames show how styles have changed over the last 500 or so years.
Gold Frames at SohoFrames
Dylan Hall, Curtis O’Dell and Oliver Gaskin are the team who run the hand finished picture frame department at SohoFrames of London. They are probably some of the finest picture frame makers currently working in Europe. We call the Hand-Finished and Ornate frames they make “Wall Couture.” Many of these creations are gold or have golden highlights.
So, what materials are used in high-quality ornate gold picture frames? The materials are timber, from which we make the frame carcass from. That said, we also sometimes use engineered sheet materials depending on the application. More on this later. Then there are various types of specialist products used to prepare the wood for the gold. Lastly there is the actual gold itself. There are several different types of gold finish which we outline below.
What are the different types of gold finishes for picture frames?
Gold finished for our picture frames fall into five categories.
Liquid Metal
This is made up of metallic powders of various kinds mixed with resin. The gold finish is brass but does look like toned gold. It is a great finish, excellent for adding a high-end art-deco look to a picture frame. The liquid metal finish only works on picture frames that have smooth flat or curved surfaces.
Gold Paint
Can be a great product for certain applications. There are of course many different brands and types. We sometimes use Roberson paint for picture frame slips, which are the slim often bevel-edged and / or decorative pieces sometimes seen on the inner edge of a picture frame. Roberson paints are super quality, water-based and easy to apply. We use fine quality artists’ brushes to apply the paint. We did experiment with spraying but found that brush worked best.
Professional Gold Spray Paint
We custom spray picture frames with professional spray equipment used by professional paint sprayers in dedicated spray booths (for health and safety reasons). The best gold look is made with Deltron Mars Gold paint, which gives a paint finish like that seen on high-end automobiles.
Gold Leaf
Gold leaf is lovely to work with. We use 22k pure gold (it’s not actually “pure.” Pure gold is too soft to work with. The karat system is made up of 24 parts. 22k gold means that if you split a leaf of gold into 24 parts then 22 out of those 24 parts is pure gold. The rest contains other metals to give it strength. Both colour and lustre of this substance is bewitching. And of course, gold has bewitched human beings for thousands of years. We use 22k gold leaf on all our gold picture frames. And all our ornate custom carved Framemakers are skilled gilders too (we also gild in silver).
Best Wood Types for Intricate Frame Carving?
Before we lay the gold onto the frame, we of course must carve it. We like to use Beech whenever possible. This is because it has a dense texture and tight grain. The tighter the grain the better. It needs little finishing after the initial carving is done. Furthermore, it holds intricate patterns beautifully without chipping out. It is excellent for gilding.
Walnut also carves well. However, walnut is probably the most expensive sustainable timber we use. It has a natural gorgeous chocolaty colour, a beautiful grain and it is therefore a shame to cover this up, even with gold.
Oak is also good, but it is variable and responds best to certain types of designs and patterning. We use White American oak for some of the exclusive ornate SohoFrames’ designs that you can see here.
How We Carve
We begin the carving process with design, first by sketches, and then using different types of specialist CAD software. When this is done, we make the picture frame, milling the separate pieces to order from raw timber plank. Once that is done, we create a cutting file and feed that into our CNC wood router. This fabulous machine then carves the main design into the raw picture frame carcass.
Clients sometimes ask how much does a CNC machine for wood carving cost? Well, it cost us around £100k to set up a professional carving workshop with state-of-the-art machinery, software, and craftsman quality tooling. Furthermore, it took another 8 years after that to learn how to make the picture frame you can see below. We have made many alterations to our CNC machine so that it runs beautifully. The latest upgrade was a 6-litre cooling system that keeps the motor at approx. 30 degrees Celsius. Motor temperature does affect how well the machine carves the patterns we design.
We also spent several years of trial and error to discover which materials worked best, what tooling worked best, as well as experimenting with spindle speeds, cut direction, and tool height. Decreasing the tool height a few millimetres can increase the efficiency by a very large factor compared to the factory pre-sets.
Once carved of course, the Framemakers here finish everything else by hand. It is a highly skilled trade and requires excellent design skills and a thorough understanding of both the material and the machine. Remember, a machine just does what it’s told, rather like a hand plane or a chisel (which we use too). The result, the beauty of the finished piece, is solely due to the natural talent, skill and experience of the operator.
The Qatari Ornate Picture Frame. A Step-by-Step Guide
Are gold picture frames still in fashion? Have a look at this contemporary gold picture frame that we made for a client in September of this year and then ask yourself.
The first thing we do when making one of our exclusive ornate gold picture frames for a client is to produce a sketch of the design.
Using the sketches as reference we recreate the design for the frame in question using CAD software.
We make the frame from raw timber plank and then cut the pattern. No matter what size the picture frame is, we adjust the pattern, sometimes by altering each geometric tile by fractions of a millimetre. This is so the pattern flows seamlessly around the circumference of the picture frame.
After hand-finishing the carving and preparing the wood, we gild on-site in our Soho workshop.
The frame then moves downstairs for quality checks and for the fitting of all the interior components.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. Wall Couture in fine timber and gold by SohoFrames of London. If you have any questions, need design advice, please just contact us. We will end by asking ourselves the same question. Are gold picture frames still in fashion? We like to think that they are very much so!