What to do after after your artwork purchase? Do you need a frame for art? Read on...
You bought an artwork! Congratulations! This single purchase is going to bring you a lifetime of pleasure, with no downsides. It doesn’t lose value year by year; it doesn’t break down and need costly repairs; it doesn’t go out of style and leave you looking like last year’s fad. Instead, it will continue to bring you beauty, joy, memories, perhaps laughter, and always a satisfying sense of the rightness of your decision.
So, with all this meaning attached to your purchase, you want to look after it and make sure it lasts as long as you live, and maybe longer. You want to protect it, because you love it, and you know it deserves the best care possible.
Often the first step toward this care is a frame.
Strictly speaking, only works on paper and paintings on panel not mounted on a structure need a frame in order that you can hang them.
As far as works on paper go, though you might sometimes see paper artworks in a gallery fastened to a wall with pins in the corners, this isn’t a long-term solution to the question of how to hang. While the little holes themselves won’t threaten the paper’s structural integrity, over time there can be a gravitational pull that can make the holes bigger, and if you have to move the piece, you run the risk of increasing the size of the holes when you pull out the pins and put them back in again.
To hang works on paper, you need a frame. And for unmounted works on panel, while you can display them on a small easel, that means you’re limited to flat surfaces. Plus, those display easels aren’t always sturdy.
To hang unmounted works on panel, you probably also need a frame.
But hanging an artwork more easily isn’t the main reason to frame it. The most important reason is because a frame protects the work.
It’s easy to see this with paper. Paper can get wet, torn, dirty, or spilled on with no way to clean it. You need something to cover its surface and make it more impervious to accidents and dust.
Even when your artwork is a painting on stretched canvas or cradled panel, and you can hang it without adding anything, it’s safer if you frame to shield the edges and corners. Paintings can fall or be knocked by accident and edges and corners usually take the brunt. Even the centre of a work on canvas can be better protected with the weight of a frame to help direct any possible tumbles.
Now you know why you need to frame an artwork. But what kind of frame should you get? Stay tuned for our next installment!