Look at the corner. Everything about how a frame was made — and what it will look like in twenty years — is written in that one square inch. There are two fundamentally different ways to build a picture frame, and the difference between them is the difference between joinery and assembly.
The chop method
Most framing today is built from chop: long sticks of moulding, already profiled and already finished at a factory, which are cut (“chopped”) to length at 45 degrees and joined — typically underpinned with v-nails from the back, sometimes glued. It is fast, economical, and consistent, and for many everyday purposes it is a perfectly reasonable way to put a frame on a wall.
But the method has a signature, and it lives at the corner. Because each stick was finished before it was cut, the finish stops at the miter: four finished surfaces meeting, rather than one continuous surface turning. The seam is visible on day one — a fine diagonal line through the finish — and time widens it. Wood moves with the seasons; a joint held by v-nails opens by fractions of a millimeter; and because the finish was never continuous across the joint, there is nothing to hide the gap. On ornamented moulding the pattern rarely resolves at the miter, and any touch-up sits on top of a factory finish it can only approximate.
The finished-corner method
A finished-corner frame (the trade also says closed-corner) reverses the sequence: the frame is joined first, then finished as one object. Raw hardwood is milled and joined — in our shop, spline-cornered — and only then does the finishing begin: gesso across the joints, carving that turns the corner as if the frame were a single piece of wood (because structurally, it now is), then gilding, painting, or hand-rubbed finishing over the whole.
The consequences are everything we care about. No visible miter seams — gesso and finish bridge the joint, so the corner reads as a continuous sculptural turn. Ornament that resolves — carved or cast decoration is designed around the corner, not interrupted by it. Structural depth — a splined, glued, gessoed joint behaves like furniture, not like sticks pinned together. And honest repairs forever — because the finish was built up by hand in layers, it can be repaired the same way, invisibly, decades from now.
Every frame that leaves our studio is built this way. It is slower, it costs more than assembly, and it is not the right answer for every poster in every hallway. It is the right answer for artwork that matters — which is the only kind we build for.
How to read a corner in ten seconds
Stand close and look at the miter line: on a chop frame you'll see the diagonal seam through the finish; on a finished-corner frame the surface turns without interruption. Check the ornament: does the pattern resolve into the corner, or collide at it? Look at the finish in raking light: factory-uniform sheen, or the faint hand-built variation of layered gesso and leaf? And around back: v-nail heads and raw miters, or a joined, finished structure?
Why we lead with this
Because the corner is the honest part. Fronts can be photographed flatteringly and finishes can be described generously, but the corner shows the sequence of how a thing was made, and the sequence is the craft. It's why the drawn gold corner is, quite literally, our signature — and why, when you visit the studio, the first thing a designer will hand you is a corner.
From the founder’s notebook: the gallery frame
From the original SBAS blog, by Sarah Balinskas, Founder.
In 1983, I was fascinated by simple contemporary hardwood “gallery” frames used by high-end contemporary art galleries and museums. The quality of frames I saw on artworks in museums was not readily available to the public. With a desire for every frame to be perfect for every artwork, I learned to make hand-finished hardwood gallery frames with spline corner joinery — like fine hand-crafted furniture.
The gallery style frame that works so well for contemporary artwork is made with moulding that has a simple profile, a flat face and a 90-degree angle from the face to the back. For me, it is the “little black dress” of framing. Although the basic profile is simple, carefully considered variations — the width of the face, the depth of the moulding, the materials and finishes — will make the end result exquisite for each artwork. Hand-finished hardwood frames, handmade gold leaf frames, and welded aluminum, bronze, and steel frames in gallery style can all be specially finished. Welded aluminum frames for contemporary art were originally designed by New York artist and frame maker Robert Kulicke in the 1950s for the Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibitions — and the welded originals were always superior to the mass-produced section frames that followed.