Entertainment
Why Is Custom Framing So Expensive? One Man Investigates.
Framers say they aren’t getting rich protecting some of your most precious memories and art, but they know you have sticker shock.
If you’ve ever walked into a professional framers, you’ll be familiar with a sense of confused outrage. At first glance, it isn’t clear why buying a small frame at Target should cost $9 and buying the same frame at a custom framers should cost as much as a Louis Vuitton handbag. The knee-jerk response is to assume that you are being ripped off.You are one of the few people too smart to fall for that kind of scam. Corruption must lie at the heart of the framing profession.
So began my investigation. On behalf of befuddled consumers, I met a range of framers to better understand how the business works and why they charge what they do. Framing is no different than any other business: You get what you pay for.
A series of talented people are “handcrafting to your specifications something that is unique,”Adam Collignon, 43, who runs Greenpoint Frames in Brooklyn, told me. “This should be valuable; this should be expensive.”
Mr. Collignon was an artist who made high-end furniture before taking over the business in 2008 from a couple who were retiring. He used to worry that he might be taking advantage of people. The longer he’s been in the business, the more he has appreciated that he is not wealthy. Framing is a labor-intensive job — Mr. Collignon said that a frame could take two days’ worth of work — and there are numerous costs to consider. At Greenpoint, you could pay $2,000 for a 18-by-24-inch hand-carved, water-gilded frame with “optium museum acrylic,” the trademark name for a deluxe type of anti-reflective protection from UV rays favored by museums.
But that cost could rise or fall, depending on where you go. It’s not just about how a frame is made, but where it is made and how much profit a framing shop expects to generate. Mr. Collignon said there are framers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that charge three times as much as he does because they are in the neighborhood with the densest population of millionaires in the country. He wants to make a decent living but avoid feeling inaccessible to the community. “If I have to say no to someone who doesn’t have enough money to frame their grandmother’s kindergarten report card, it’s just not interesting to me.”
