frame laminate repair???

J

Jason M

CGF, Certified Grumble Framer
Joined
Jan 14, 2025
Posts
133
Loc
Ocean Springs, Mississippi
Business
Ethotera Art Studio
A piece of tape was pulled off of this frame and took some of the laminate with it. Is there a way to fix this for the customer that brought it in or is the time and effort more than just them buying a new frame. Customer did not get this from me. I am also wanting to learn how to repair stuff like this if it can be.
 

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yea thats what i was thinking. Customer is also a friend. My wife is an artist so maybe she can blend it out with some of her paints.
 
Been there, tried to do that. There's no way to repair something like that because it's not exactly leaf and the base coat isn't what is usually under leaf.
 
Yea shes an artist and the people at the art show taped the registration tag on the face of the frame and wouldnt do anything about it. I will just give it back to her. Thanks yall. I didnt think there was a way to make it disappear
 
Jason M said:
Is it normal for these finishes to be so fragile or is it just poor quality with some manufactureres
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The simple answer is yes.
It is the nature of the beast for any "gilded" surface, real gold or metal leaf. They can be hand applied surfaces or mechanically applied leaf.

For the sake of clarification I would classify a gilded surface not the same concept as a "foil" coated surface. A foil in my thinking would be a much thicker material. metal leaf and genuine gold leaf are measured in millionths of an inch vs foils are measured in thousands or ten thousands of an inch. Foils are thus in a magnitude of 10-100 times thicker. I could not find and specific thickness range for metal leaf( composition metal leaf, Dutch leaf, or Schlagmetal)
 
May I add one careful thought?
If a show label or registration tag is still on a frame, and removing it may damage the finish, sometimes it might be better to leave it there and let it become part of the story of the piece.
I say this because we once had an old icon in for restoration. There was a nail driven into it, and a very serious restorer explained to us, very seriously, that the nail should not be removed. It was no longer just “damage.” It had become part of the history of that icon.
Since then, that idea has stayed in my head.
Of course, this is different from a normal repair job, and the client has to agree. But sometimes a mark on a frame, especially if it came from an exhibition, is not only a defect. It can be part of the provenance.
I once bought a painting where the artist had made the frame himself out of what looked like floor trim. From a framing point of view, it was probably the ugliest frame in my little gallery. But if I had replaced it, I would have removed half the charm and half the story.
So maybe the best repair is not always to hide the wound. Sometimes it is to explain it.
 
Tato Karlo said:
But if I had replaced it, I would have removed half the charm and half the story.
So maybe the best repair is not always to hide the wound. Sometimes it is to explain it.
Click to expand...
This reminds me of how the Japanese repair broken pottery with "stitches" of metals ("Kintsugi"), which become part of the "story" of the piece.
:cool: Rick
 
A gallery owner customer of mine brought me a frame of similar construction. It was around 4ft square
and 4" wide flat moulding. He had sold the (quite expensive) oil painting in it at an exhibition and stuck
a little red [SOLD] sticker on the frame. When it came to peeling the sticker off it left a little red spot. :(
I tried to touch it up with imitation gold leaf but the toning on the frame and the flat profile made it impossible
to blend it in. In the end I used parcel tape to strip the rest of the gold off in the manner of leg-waxing and
re-gilding the whole thing with gold powder bound in varnish. It didn't look identical but it was OK and was
easy enough to do.
The customer and the subsequent buyer of the painting were satisfied. 🙂

** The next week he brought me the other one where he had done exactly the same thing. 😆
 
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