The Giclee Printer and "handmade" frames

The roll of a Giclée printer seems to be expanding. Giclée printing began somewhere in the late 80’s, well before the name Giclée was introduced. This unique printing process has the sole objective of helping artists, galleries and art publishers, supporting a myriad of printing facilities. The evolution has been through a number of printing technologies, starting with the IRIS and most recently coming to UV Curable flatbed inkjet technologies. The Giclée print houses have adapted to their individual markets with different processes and technologies, such as in-house scanning, automated coating, hand stretching and framing.


At Harvest Productions we’ve added yet another service. Last week we began our first “hand made – closed corner” framing project. We’ve been encouraged to develop this by two customers for some years, and only recently had the good fortune of hiring two experienced craftsmen. For those who aren’t familiar with the terminology “closed corners” this type of framing is best described by me as “old world craftsmanship”. Surely when framing began to surround original art pieces, each frame was made specifically for that piece of art. That is to say that the frame was built, joined and then finished to reflect the needs of the individual piece of art. Today that’s not practical for the vast majority of framing needs. There simply couldn’t be enough people, enough shops, or enough sanders time to be able to manufacture all the frames that the world requires on daily basis. But for the lucky few who have an art piece which deserves the quality of a “closed corner - handmade frame”, it’s truly a source of satisfaction. We haven’t figured out how or if this will be a profitable process at Harvest, but we feel fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in respecting Giclée as an art form. That is to say, Giclée has to be pretty valuable to deserve this much attention in framing. Our progress so far on the frames we’re working on, is that we have had milled 500 feet of bass wood (that’s Brazilian pine like hardwood). This material was post sanded and inspected to be free of flaws. We have joined this material in to ten rectangles to the exact size requirements of the one of a kind Giclées that are being manufactured as I write this. These unusual frame profiles would not fit into the chopping or joining machine, consequently they had to be hand cut and hand joined. The second step is to seal all cracks nail holes and any variations with automobile bondo-like filler and then sand, sand, sand. Thirdly, the soon-to-be frames were hand rubbed with a custom color mixed solvent paint. This gives the framing material a dull patina that is only achieved from hand rubbing. So far, the pieces look like they have great potential. Perhaps in the end, their final finish will compliment the Giclées in a way that demonstrates their value. Of course, we have no way of knowing until it’s done. I’ll keep you informed as we progress on these frames.

Who would have thought that a Giclée printer could ever need to make hand made frames?

Visit Harvest Productions for more information