This place is absolutely hands down the best place for custom framing in the whole Tucson area (besides their sister store Framed To Perfection in Oro Valley). I first discovered this gem of a store ten years ago in a quest to have a custom frame job for an oil painting done on very delicate rice paper I received as a gift on a trip to China. I visited multiple framing places in town including several of the well known chain stores and each one of them told me that they would use a dry mounting process which uses heat to adhere the art work to a foam like mounting board. While I am OK with this technique for posters and the like, I was a bit skeptical when each place tried to assure me that dry mounting would not burn or at best crinkle the delicate rice paper.
Well I finally found the Poster Warehouse and Bill (one of the owners with his wife Karen) told me that they would never consider doing a dry mount for such a piece and instead detailed the conservation mounting process they would use (I have since learned from Karen that they are one of only a few people in town that are actually officially certified for conservation framing according to Library of Congress standards and that most of these other people have at one time been associated with them). While conservation mounting is more expensive, this made me feel a heck of a lot more confident in what I was going to get. Needles to say, the framing came out perfect.
After this great experience, I have had over 15 other pieces framed by them over the years using a combination of dry and conservation mounting and have never been disappointed. I often times go in with a rough idea of what I want, and their overwhelming selection of frames and matting that the staff are actually familiar with (way more than any other place I have ever been) always leaves me multiple options to choose just the right frame for the job. I also enjoy going into the store to see what other people have brought them to frame because they always seem to have some cool and unusual job going on (one time when I was in they were in the process of framing gigantic invaluable tree ring specimens for the University of Arizona Tree Ring Laboratory - if they can frame and mount that, they can do anything!).
In addition to their large selection, they are completely on top of the innovations in the framing industry. They have the ability to actually take a picture of your work with an overhead camera and allow you to look at with various matting and framing options on a computer and are in the process of actually updating this with the most state of the art system out there.
Finally, while I probably have already written enough about their framing technique, I really feel I need to mention the other aspect of this place that makes it so great and that is the owners Bill and Karen and their staff (including Jackie). They are some of the most awesome and knowledgeable people to work with in this area. They know their products well and if they don't have a sample on the wall, they know where to look to find a frame that may be in between two you are looking at.
Most recently I brought in over the course of several months, three original professionally done watercolor paintings I had acquired on a recent trip to China. Each one was done in conservation mounting and they were able to help me find the perfect frame that suited each one. While the first two I had framed were for gifts, the third painting I had done as a birthday present for myself. The large size of this particular work made it sort of difficult to find a frame that both was appropriate for the subject matter and style and had enough thickness to not look ridiculous or overwhelming.
We pulled multiple frame samples from the wall and together with Jackie I decided I wanted a frame somewhere in between two others we had picked out. She immediately went to work to find me some other choices from an online catalog for a vendor they work with and said she would also pull some samples from their Oro Valley store (which apparently has an even bigger selection of samples) for me to look at in a couple of days. In addition, Karen said she would look for something for me at a framing trade show she and Bill would be attending in Las Vegas the next week. As luck would have it, Karen found a frame at the show for me that looks absolutely stunning for this piece. What other place in town are you going to find people that go out of their way like this for a customer?
When I did finally go to pick up my piece on my birthday, they also had a birthday card waiting for me and a small frame they had made with remnants of the frame pieces they had cut for my watercolor. As a birthday gift they offered to mount anything I wanted to bring to them for this frame free of charge. I was just speechless! As long as they decide to stay to in business, I will only continue to have my framing done at the Poster Warehouse. read more