Lest we forget....

Armistice Day has come and once again it is so good to see so many people wearing poppies and taking the time to acknowledge what it represents.
We see a definate increase at this time of year of orders for Medal sets to be framed, often to be passed down to younger generations which is very encouraging and so important to keep these family stories alive and present.
I've said often to customers and I really mean it, that we feel it to be a real priveledge to be asked to frame these collections and to be entrusted with such personal, often poignant family heritage and their many amazing, sometimes tragic stories.
We hope that our customers are reassured that we always treat these precious family heirlooms with the greatest respect and care.

Here are a few examples of some of the Medal sets we have framed for our customers...
A Royal Marine collection, all painstakingly stitched onto the mount with invisible thread...



More cherished family medals...





Below, a most unusual collection of very rare medals including a Waterloo Medal! And most astonishingly a Crimean War medal showing clasps for the Battles of Balaclava and Sebastopol - the Charge of the Light Brigade of course, where the soldier was apparently shot and captured by the Russian army... and many other rare medals that we will be unlikely to have the chance to handle again.

This fragile embroidery stitched by a wounded soldier in his hospitol bed, had too little fabric for the lacing needed to stretch it flat, so in this case I carefully stitched on linen extension pieces all the way around...
And then laced it carefully over a layer of wadding and conservation board...

It was then mounted and framed with UV protection conservation glass to preserve the colours of the threads and protect the fragile fabric.

Here from a different customer, below is another beautiful piece of soldier's embroidery, this time made whilst he was a Prisoner of War, using only his cap badge as a guide... an amazing piece of history rightly cherished by his family.

There are some more examples on the medals page at the top right hand side of the blog, and some more will be added soon.

Wear your Poppy with pride!

Some more examples - Medals and Shirts galore!

It seems it's about time I showed some more recent examples of specialist framing, and for this post its all medals and shirts! Indeed these are the most popular kinds of specialist items to box frame and we do take a bit of professional pride in them!
Below is a detail of the interesting set of medals in the first picture. As well as the usual set of WW2 medals, this individual had ten Rifle Shooting medals which we hand stitched onto the suedette mountcard. The stitching is fiddly work but the end results are really satisfying!

Here below is another interesting set, again with the medals hand stitched onto suedette mountcards, this time Football medals from 1912 to 1928...

(The bendy window apperture is distortion from my camera lens - it is actually cut straight!)

Next below our shop example medal set showing how you could incorporate cap badges and flashes with your medals... Again it is all shadow mounted to keep the glass well clear of the medals.

And finally last of the medals for today as a change from the WW2 medals we so often frame, an Iraq War Veteran's medal very aptly framed in a much more contemporary style which I think suits it very well.

So now to the shirts... All of our shirts are first stretched over acid neutral conservation board and then hand stitched onto the under mount. We use no glues, so the whole process is completely reversable. The shadow mount keeps the glass clear of the shirt and presents it really smartly in a deep box frame.


This one has been done as a 'full shirt' with an extra window for some text....

And this one below has been done as a 'half shirt'...

As a general guide a 'full shirt' would start at £150 to £180, while a 'half shirt' would start around £120 to £140.
Medal sets very much depend on how much or little you'd like to include but can range between about £60 to £100. Please do feel free to drop by for a free no obligation quote, we're always more than happy to help!
More examples coming soon...

Three generations of military service...

It being Armistice Day, I thought it an appropriate time to show a recent example of an interesting bespoke framing job. Our customer kindly gave us permission to show his finished frame which shows three generations of military service in his family - himself, his Father, and his Grandfather who served in the first world war, and I am told was only sixteen years old in this photo.
Each service man has been quadruple mounted in his regimental colours, with his cap badge shadow-mounted in an oval or circle apperture above. Quite a tricky mount to cut but well worth it for the effect. I photographed it before the glass was fitted to get some reflection free shots!



We seem to have had a few more medal framing enquiries than usual this week with Armistice Day being on everyone's mind. I will be putting some more medal examples up soon, but please feel free to drop in with your specifications and we'll be happy to advise.

A general guide to costs of framing medals are approximately between £40 and £60 depending on the frame chosen and how many medals or additional objects such as cap badges, regimental flashes or photographs etc... are included.

Our Armistice Day window display will be up for a few more days yet if you haven't seen it. It includes is a framed signed limited edition Artists proof of Queen Elizabeth by renowned portrait painter 'Christian Furr' to be auctioned in aid of HELP FOR HEROES on December the 11th at Norton Hill School.
I will post more details shortly...

Wear your Poppy with pride.

An update - some recent examples...

I've realised with all the catching up after the shop move that we've not posted for a while... so I thought I'd show a few of the interesting jobs we have framed for our customers recently.
This is a rather nice set of Royal Naval WW2 medals - one with an oakleaf commendation. They have been shadow mounted onto blue suede mountboard with a gun metal/pewter effect frame which sets it off really well.
It's always nice to have a photo of the person too which always makes it so much more personal and gives a connection to the man's life and brave deeds. There are always such amazing and courageous stories behind these medal sets that really should be honoured and remembered. So many of these war medals are split and sold off, losing their stories and becoming anonomous which I believe is a real shame.

On a different note (or power chord!) here is a snare drumskin signed by the band Motorhead. It has been shadow mounted as well, with the drumskin set into a circular cut apperture and supported behind with foam board. Sorry for the unclear picture here, the Motorhead logo is mounted behind its own bevel cut window in the bottom mount and the frame is a deep profile ideal for box framing.

Now for a tricky one! An original Disney sketch with pin badge... The mountcard I had to replicate on this one was probebly originally cut on a computerised mountcutting machine, but I had to cut it by hand on our Keencut Oval cutter and Ultimat Gold cutter. No easy task!
First I cut the circle in the outer mount then carefully measured and marked out with a compass my quarter circle cut with start and stop marks. It's very hard to do an accurate partial cut on a circle by hand on this machine so it was some challenge to then do it all again 5mm deeper for the yellow inner mount!I then cut the rest of the double mount as normal on the Ultimat Gold cutter for the straight edges and backed it with foam board to support the pin of the badge.

And here is another shirt belonging to the Paulton Rovers goal keeper who played against Norwich City last year. He'd actually swopped shirts with the Norwich City goalie and we framed that up as well to go with it!
There has been quite a few really nice shirts framed in the last few months that we didn't manage to photograph, including a fully signed Real Madrid shirt, a fully signed child's Liverpool shirt, Bath Rugby shirts and a burgandy Paulton Rovers home shirt that went into a burgandy stained frame with burgandy inner mount and looked great!

More updates coming soon!

Medals, more medals, and some restoration...

Here are some nice medal sets we enjoyed framing this week, both with shadow mounts on a lovely green cotton suede mount card. Both turned out very smartly indeed!

Some WW2 medals and personal items...

And the coins, flashes and medal of a Corporal recently serving in Afghanistan. (Sorry about the funny camera angle - it was the only relfection free shot!)

Also staying with the military theme... here are some rather impressive before and after shots of a digital photo restoration and reprint job done for us by our marvellous man at PHOENIX PHOTOGRAPHICS! Unfortunately we haven't got a photo of the reprint in its new framing but it certainly shows how even something as damaged as this can be expertly saved!