James Gillick Studio

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Focus on framing 8. How a frame starts out. Timber comes into the studio as great big cross section slices of trees sti...
15/11/2025

Focus on framing 8. How a frame starts out. Timber comes into the studio as great big cross section slices of trees still with the bark on, often 12 feet long and 2½ feet wide. Jude & I clamber all over great stacks of it in wood yards, pulling out the boards with the specific grain we require. We then process it with a band saw, planer and thicknesser before beginning to make it into frames. Here I am marking out sections to extract on either side of the unusable heartwood.
The wood yard we use is full of huge, old trees mostly blown over in storms from amongst the 30 million mature trees growing in the UK. Many of them have been air drying for more than a decade. It actually seems regenerative to be making something out of them at last.

11/11/2025

Focus on framing 7. Sanding the finished frame before the addition of any necessary colour enriching stains, the essential sealing with french polish, and any subsequent gilding and final wax polishing.

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Focus on framing 6. A stack of five glued frames in oak, walnut, ebony and palm await having tapered slots cut for tight...
10/11/2025

Focus on framing 6. A stack of five glued frames in oak, walnut, ebony and palm await having tapered slots cut for tightening wedges to be fitted into their corners.

10/11/2025

Focus on framing 5. The spindle moulder trim is the last machine stage of frame making. This invaluable but dangerous piece of kit is used to trim the exterior before polishing and gilding takes place. Here, a frame in American Black Walnut gets its final pass.

Walnut from in Hull

08/11/2025

Focus on framing 4. Another way to construct a corner joint is to cut a slot into the corner and fill the slot with a thin slice of wood. To bond this wafer in place with pegs in this way is as old, or older than Egyptian furniture. It creates a very strong corner. Here I am securing the corner of a frame made out of dark palm with super-hard pegs made out of boxwood.

***ng !!!!

07/11/2025

Focus on framing series 3. Tapered wedges of wood, covered with an old style glue made of wood resin is all that is needed to hold the corner of a picture frame together. This is how corners were always completed in the pre-modern period because it is a rust proof method. Most pins, nails & V nails are a less robust substitute. So, though these take time to make, they're a very long way from being a trifle or a vain fancy.

05/11/2025

Focus on frame making series. Here, the slots are cut in the back of the frame to take the tapered wedges that hold a traditional frame's corners together. More to come.

Chisels by ashley iles of course

05/11/2025

Focus on frame making series. Here, hand planing the wedges of wood that hold a traditional frame's corners together. More to come.

I began making frames in-house because I wanted more weight & natural colouring, less painted surfaces & more control over timings. My son Jude, , usually helps me with frames but he is in the middle of building a very complex library at the moment.

Clifton hand plane by
Hardwoods by

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Lincolnshire

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