Al E
CGF II, Certified Grumble Framer Level 2
There have been many posts on TG describing, in excruciating detail, the extent to which some customers will go to "save money" on a framing job. We usually write them off as being "cheap". I would like to propose that there is another factor operating which, besides frugality, contributes to this phenomenon. Here are two recent examples which will serve to demonstrate my point.
I know a local crafter making silhouettes. They are well done and quite popular. Recently she described to me how she does her own framing which includes cutting mats with a hand held cutter on her dining room floor, cleaning glass from the hardware store etc. She spends more time on the framing (which, as you already guessed, looks horrible) than her craft.
I also know an artist who has had several museum shows, owns her own gallery in Dumbo (a trendy Bklyn enclave) and routinely sells pieces for five figures. She is planning an exhibition of her work and is going to pin the majority of the work to the wall and is asking me to cut mats she will buy elsewhere, hardware store glass and swiss clips she already has.
Now it is quite easy for me to write them off as "cheap" but they aren't. I am not aware of any other aspect of their work or personal lives in which they come close to demonstrating such frugality. They are both savvy business people who realize the hours they are wasting could be used making or selling their products. They know the work would look better and have told me so. Their experience is that the work will sell no matter how it is framed but I am not considering that as a factor. Its that the time they spend framing (and they hate it with a passion) is couterproductive, and they know they are losing money doing it themselves.
And this is the point I would like to raise: there must be more operating here than just saving money. They wouldn't do the same for any other area of their business or personal lives for that matter. Why is it that people have this compulsion, beyond saving money, to avoid paying for framing? Why would someone act against their best interests (financial included) to avoid custom framing? Is it something we said?
I know a local crafter making silhouettes. They are well done and quite popular. Recently she described to me how she does her own framing which includes cutting mats with a hand held cutter on her dining room floor, cleaning glass from the hardware store etc. She spends more time on the framing (which, as you already guessed, looks horrible) than her craft.
I also know an artist who has had several museum shows, owns her own gallery in Dumbo (a trendy Bklyn enclave) and routinely sells pieces for five figures. She is planning an exhibition of her work and is going to pin the majority of the work to the wall and is asking me to cut mats she will buy elsewhere, hardware store glass and swiss clips she already has.
Now it is quite easy for me to write them off as "cheap" but they aren't. I am not aware of any other aspect of their work or personal lives in which they come close to demonstrating such frugality. They are both savvy business people who realize the hours they are wasting could be used making or selling their products. They know the work would look better and have told me so. Their experience is that the work will sell no matter how it is framed but I am not considering that as a factor. Its that the time they spend framing (and they hate it with a passion) is couterproductive, and they know they are losing money doing it themselves.
And this is the point I would like to raise: there must be more operating here than just saving money. They wouldn't do the same for any other area of their business or personal lives for that matter. Why is it that people have this compulsion, beyond saving money, to avoid paying for framing? Why would someone act against their best interests (financial included) to avoid custom framing? Is it something we said?