blast from the past

[Kai Vanuffelen]

Yesterday I had to reframe photos featuring pricipals of a local high school. They were initially framed by my father over several years. It was interesting to see how they were framed. The oldest had a 2 ply acidic backing stapled to the back of the frame without glue or adhesive. Potentially inscects could have crawled in them, but that was not the case. These backings my father moistened with a sponge and then stapled them. After stapling the moisture gradually disappeared from the backing board and tightened. The hanging was with screw-eyes and a single cord of thick nylon cord. The miters were joined by shooting two staples into the sides of the corner and filling them up with colored wax. We did not have a v-nailer in those days, so it must have been framed shortly after 1986 when my father bought the shop from Gordon Moess. There were further staples along the back of the frame shot into the miter on each side. The package was fastened with nails driven in with a hammer, which we still have and use occasionally. We never had a corner-vice and instead my father used a single Morso clamp which he placed on the workbench. After that he placed springclips on each corner with a special clamping tool. This produced further indentations in the frame, and were used to let the glue dry and further push the miters together. The glass was 3/16 " thick, which was thicker than the standard clear glass today of 1/8" thick. The double matboard with the darkest color on top and lighter color inside had brown bevels as in those days we did not have conservation-type matboards let alone cotton-boards. I bent the package slightly to create a gap between the photo and the matboard to allow an 18" steel ruller to slide in between with the rounded end. This way I removed the matboard to be replaced with a new one with the colors done dark inside, light outside as we tend to do nowadays unless the customer wishes otherwise.
Later pictures had rusted v-nails and copper nails turned green. These were shot in to hold the package with a tool, that has long been thrown out. Another was framed with triangular framers points and finished with self adhesive brown tape. We used two layers of tape. One only covering the staples and on top of that another brown tape covering the back of the frame and staples. We later used double string for extra strength and D-rings. Our phonenumber on the stickers has always remained 37944 and later 35 weas added to the front as all numbers in Palmerston North. Perhaps we inherited that number from the previous owner. We started off in 6 Dahlia Street, a building we can still see from our shop and is now occupied by an office of McDonalds. We moved to 104 Princess Street and a few years ago the city-council changed all the street-numbers in the central business district, so now we operate from 88 Princess Street. Still the same building, that started off as a residential house over a hundred years ago and has been renovated many times over the years. Nowadays nobody lives in Princess Street.