Framing Karsh Photos

tedh

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
Joined
Mar 13, 2002
Posts
12,608
Loc
Eastern Ontario
Business
Canal Gallery
What would you do?

Yousuf Karsh, famed photographer of the ‘40s onward, presented his photos with off-white mats.

Customer brought in two Karsh images of doctors that were framing for a local hospital. Customer thought a grey mat would work, because the white paper surrounding the images differed.

One of us thinks “stay with the traditional Karsh presentation”.
One of us says “do what the customer wants”.

What would you do?
 
Another view:

Did you engage the customer at all in their reasoning for choosing that color over Warm White?
Was the person a designer or an art consultant?

Grey (gray) matting rarely is a pure blend of black and white, and even rarer having the correct shade to work with the particular middle tones created from the black of silver gelatin photos on rag paper. That the paper color doesn't match doesn't matter as they are individual pieces developed by hand in chemistry of variable consistency, and probably lived in environments with the same qualities.

If the customer left thinking they were getting grey mats, I would say this is all water under the bridge. Reopening the conversation is probably not a great idea. The next person to work on them can restore the original mats. In the meantime look hard for the best 8-ply grey rag mats you can find.
 
I think it's good to let the customer know how the artist framed their work at the design phase. Sometimes historical significance and maintaining integrity for the artist's preference is important to the client, sometimes it's not. Not everything is for a museum.
 
I had a customer who routinely said he wanted his artwork framed "just like they would do it in a museum". He would also rarely like how his stuff looked when we did it that way. I explained to him more than once that was because his home didn't have light colored wooden or tiled floors and didn't have all the walls painted the most neutral color possible. Homes have a certain warmth that museums lack. That fact makes a difference.
 
I had a customer who routinely said he wanted his artwork framed "just like they would do it in a museum"....
Maybe they just meant 'to the same standards a museum would use' as opposed to the aesthetics of the look. Many museums have a stock of pre-made frames, often a splined-corner hardwood, that they use interchangeably to display prints or other paper-borne art for exhibit. These are more for utilitarian purposes and not intended to enhance the look of the art decoratively as we might for home display.
:coffeedrinker2: Rick
 
Here’s the background:

I had a customer long ago who collected Karsh photos. He framed them to Karsh’s proportions and colours. The mat borders were quite unique. Must have done between five to ten of them. All were done with off-white mats. Sort of a formal, traditional presentation.

This week a customer brought in two, and I was not there. I’m in the middle of turning over the business to one of my staff. She and the customer decided on grey. Later, we discussed the choice, without the customer being present. I’m on the side of the off-white, the staffer with the grey.

We googled his framed photos, and 99% are indeed off-white. To me, a Karsh gets the treatment that all of his get. I think the proper and historic choice is the off-white, but we decided to let it go. No point in confusing the customer, but if she does come back with a request to go back to off-white, I’ll be the first to tell my staffer “I told you so”!

By the way: Back in the sixties, we lived a mile from him. He had a smallish estate with a tennis court, “Little Wings”, and some of the girls of the area asked to play there, and he graciously let them. Today, everything has been torn down, and turned into a development.
 
This is the same concept when in the past museum conservators threw out the original picture frames of paintings in favor of "the modern style" frames to their chagrin many years later.
 
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