Frameworks

Frameworks at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue NW is a custom picture framing studio in the upper Georgetown gallery corridor, sharing the Wisconsin Avenue address with the Addison/Ripley Fine Art gallery and positioned in the commercial block that serves Georgetown’s art community. The custom framing studio at this address serves the Georgetown art collector, the Georgetown galleries, and the private clients who need professional framing for the works on paper, photographs, and canvases that they are preparing for display.

Custom picture framing in the professional sense involves the full range of decisions that the presentation of a work of art requires: the frame moulding, chosen from the hundreds of profiles and finishes that the professional framer’s samples represent; the mat, cut to the specific proportions that the work and the frame require; the glazing, from the standard picture glass through the conservation-grade UV-filtering glass and the non-reflective glass that specific presentation conditions demand; and the mounting system that holds the work in the frame without damage to the paper or the image support.

Conservation framing, which the Frameworks studio provides as the standard for fine art presentation, uses only the archival materials that the museum and conservation community has established as safe for long-term contact with works of art: the acid-free mat board, the Japanese tissue hinging, the stainless steel hardware, and the glazing materials that filter the ultraviolet light that accelerates paper and pigment degradation.

The Georgetown gallery corridor context at 1670 Wisconsin means that Frameworks serves the professional art community’s framing needs alongside the private collector, which maintains the studio’s technical standards at the level that the art market requires.

Hours run Monday through Saturday. The framing consultation at Frameworks, which typically begins with the framer examining the work to understand the object’s condition, scale, and context, proceeds through the sample presentation in which the client handles moulding and mat samples at full scale to understand how the chosen frame will affect the work’s presentation. The scale of the frame sample and the mat sample is critical: a moulding that looks correct at six inches may overwhelm a work at eighteen inches of actual frame, and only the full-scale test reveals the relationship.

The Wisconsin Avenue gallery corridor context in which Frameworks operates means that the gallery-quality standard of presentation is the studio’s minimum acceptable result. The Georgetown collector who is framing the work acquired at the Addison/Ripley gallery next door, or the work from any source, brings the work to Frameworks with the expectation of the conservation framing standard that the professional gallery requires for the work in its care. Hours run Monday through Saturday. The Frameworks studio at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue operates Monday through Saturday, with the framing consultation available by walk-in during the studio’s open hours and by appointment for the larger or more complex framing projects that benefit from extended consultation time. The conservation framing standard that Frameworks applies to every project reflects the gallery-quality expectation of the Georgetown art community.