The Best Framers in New York

Downing Frames, 63 Flushing Avenue, Building 303, Suite 509., Brooklyn Navy Yard; downingframes.com

No request is too far-fetched for Downing Frames, which has been building pieces (from $200 to $38,000) for blue-chip artists, galleries, and museums like MoMA and the SculptureCenter for nearly 16 years. For Deana Lawson’s 2021 show at the Guggenheim, Downing incorporated mirrors, stickers, and holograms into frames for her interactive works. For artist Mariah Robertson’s geometric chromogenic prints, Downing created asymmetrical polygon frames. When multimedia artist Erin Shirreff wanted her pieces built inside the frame (think of a model ship in a bottle), she called the Brooklyn Navy Yard framer. “Downing does everything for us,” says Yuta Nakajima, senior director at Hauser & Wirth, adding that the framer can pull off feats with remarkable turnaround. Nakajima recently needed eight large, delicate Philip Guston works in frames with gold leaf applied by hand; it would ordinarily be a six-week job, but Downing had them ready in a month.

Greenpoint Frames, 937 Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint; greenpointframes.com

The Somerset House founder Alan Eckstein has gone to Greenpoint Frames for five years. Eckstein has since moved out of the neighborhood, but the fashion designer still heads back to Greenpoint for framing (for both his store and home) because of the shop’s excellent price-to-quality ratio. “Frame shops in the city are going to charge double what Adam Collignon charges, and the quality will be sometimes worse,” says Eckstein, recalling a 30-by-20-inch piece that came in at a $300-to-$400 framing estimate at Greenpoint Frames and $1,000 in Manhattan. Collignon has owned the business since 2018, when he took it over from his mentors. He has since made some updates, like adding new materials to the inventory and hiring his own staff (who Eckstein says did an “incredible job” with an uneven painted metal sign by a Jamaican artist that he recently brought in). “It feels like a little artist community in there,” Eckstein says. “They’re always playing cool music.”

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Ask a Framer

Adam Collignon, owner of Greenpoint Frames in Greenpoint

Illustration: Pete Gamlen

Is there a mat-and-frame combination that looks good with any piece of art?
There is no magic pill, unfortunately, but that’s the value we bring, right? We look at the compositional elements of the piece and the frame, and the whole thing in concert becomes an artwork.

What goes into deciding how a piece should be framed?
If five people brought in the same work of art, it’s likely that each would leave with a different frame. We ask people about their living space. Everyone’s home is made up of hundreds of colors and textures. So in addition to fitting the artwork, we want the frame to fit the environment.

Does framing come down to instinct?
Oh, yeah, I hover my hands over your artwork and absorb its essence — what does the work want? And we stare into a vortex in the shop … I’m joking, obviously. But I do think as designers we have an obligation to put forward our best suggestions and serve as custodians of framing’s long history.

Is there a rule of thumb for choosing a mat color?
Are you asking me to reveal the secrets of the vortex?

Yes. What does the vortex say about colored mats?
Colors are a commitment, but some clients show me photos of their home and it’s like Pee-wee’s Playhouse. In that case, I have no problem throwing out something vibrant for them because we know that gives them joy.

— Katie Arnold-Ratliff

Handmade Frames, 1013 Grand St. Suite 216, Williamsburg; handmadeframes.us

Architect Annabelle Selldorf has been taking her personal art collection to Handmade Frames since 1990. She has referred her clients to Paul Baumann and Marilyn Gold, who own the shop, for just as long, sending them everything “from contemporary works to old masters,” she says. “They are meticulous in their approach to every project, whether it is for a museum or an individual.” One standout feature in Handmade Frames’ work: Baumann and Gold take into account the realities of living in a city like New York and find inventive ways to frame pieces (from $200) beautifully but flexibly. For a 27-foot-long Richard Serra quintych, they built a lacquered maple frame designed to break into two pieces during transportation; a delicate Hao Liang painted silk scroll was mounted with three glass panels to protect the work from light and airborne dirt. For Selldorf, though, it’s simple: “They know how to show the piece at its best.”

Soho Picture Framing, 611 Broadway; sohopictureframingny.com

Stylist Beverly Nguyen has a very specific preference for frames: “I have most of my artwork in a 1.5-inch oak frame with floating glass,” she says, explaining that, to her eye, “it allows the piece to stand out and not distract you.” Nguyen, whose eponymous homewares shop stocks a lot of similarly warm and pared-down bowls, spoons, and brooms, initially had a hard time finding a framer that would build something to her specs: “Believe it or not, ten other framers fought me on this very simple design I requested.” Nguyen went by Soho Picture Framing after reading its Google reviews and found the perfect shade of oak (ask for “natural”) at the right price (from $250). And the owner, Michael Ingbar, immediately agreed to her dimensions. “He met me with no resistance,” says Nguyen, who has since gotten ten pieces framed with him.

Bark Frameworks, 21-24 44th Ave., Long Island City; barkframeworks.com

When Elizabeth “Buffy” Easton first started working with Bark Frameworks, she was the chair of the European-paintings department at the Brooklyn Museum and had undertaken the sensitive task of reframing some of the museum’s Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. Easton and Jed Bark spent ten years studying the collection before replacing the generic Louis XIV– and Louis XV–style frames with hand-carved ones made to honor the artists’ brushstrokes and composition. “I had never before considered the importance a frame plays in how one looks at a work of art,” she says, noting that one of Bark’s new frames for a Monet changed the viewing experience entirely by revealing an additional 45 square inches of the canvas. Easton continues to send pieces (both professional and personal) to Bark, both for his critical eye and the shop’s manufacturing capabilities: “I don’t know of any other framer that has both gilders in-house as well as a metal shop,” she says. “They can make a metal frame with no seams because they fabricate it directly for the work.” (Prices start at $350.)

Ulfig Projects, 544 Park Ave., Bedford-Stuyvesant; ulfigprojects.com

Interior Designer Adam Charlap Hyman is a genuine frame obsessive (“People make fun of me because I go to museums and take photos of the frames,” he says) and trusts Weston Ulfig with his own pieces. Charlap Hyman says that Ulfig typically makes “very quiet structural decisions” that add life to contemporary, modern pieces — at a slightly below-market rate for high-end framing (from $275 to $4,000), as he crafts all of his orders in-house instead of sending them out. For a series of Charlap Hyman’s own cutouts, Ulfig suggested mounting the works onto a textured mat, which, he said, would allow the viewer to pick up the shadow and dimension of the piece. “Ulfig performs this magic trick of putting pieces in a frame that gives them the right amount of space and air, with the right color around them, to make someone stop and look twice,” says Charlap Hyman.