Yesteryear Prints - A Christchurch landmark

Christchurch picture framer and art print retailer Yesteryear Prints is to close its doors after 35 years.

This suburban print gallery in Beckenham was very well known in Christchurch both for their unique collection of art prints from NZ and around the world as well as first class picture framing - often with a long waitlist.  Yesteryear's longevity in the competitive world of art retail is a tribute to its current owners Norma and Graeme Elcock who steadily built the business over the 80s and 90s into a very successful store.

The business is not being sold as a going concern, the stock is being put on sale and the distinctive building has sold.  We understand their framer, Anton, is going to another framing shop in Ferrymead.

Yesteryear Prints 28 June 2017

Norma and Graeme had a very particular eye for older style (ok, I'll say it, "yesteryear") prints - classic Pears soap advertisements and Victoriana was a particular strength (they supplied us with many of these re-prints of old public notices in our letterpress posters collection).

We don't have quite the same depth in these specialities but as NZ Fine Prints stock over 2500 different titles of art prints just a few minutes away from the Yesteryear Prints previous location we should be able to help you find the perfect print - please check out our catalogue online at Prints.co.nz. You can collect prints from us if you are in Christchurch or we deliver nationwide.

Picture framing - layout options for online product pages

Framed print - black boxframe style - (Rita Angus' Cass)

Eagle eyed shoppers at prints.co.nz may have noticed that along with the good folks over at our long time ecommerce partners Miva NZ Fine Prints have been testing several different layouts of online product pages over recent months.

Testing Picture Framing Options

As we move onto Miva's next generation responsive ecommerce platform our user experience team are working out the clearest way of showing the different mounting and framing options available on prints that we stock on the new responsive page template designs.

(It feels like we have been testing framing options on all our prints for so long, partly this is due to working on the behind the scenes systems to be able to frame (or stretch canvas prints) in a timely and efficient manner after we had our physical premises much reduced in size following our post earthquakes relocation to a different part of Christchurch.)

We also have not been able to resolve whether each main product page should have the same basic layout or if we should have three templates (for reproduction prints/posters, original prints and canvas prints).  The split testing on our site was designed to resolve this question as well.

A core belief is that we don't want to interrupt customers browsing the site for artwork with cross-sell demands where they are prompted to frame prints before they can checkout.   We have thousands of happy customers who have been content to purchase their prints directly without NZ Fine Prints necessarily framing their order as well.  Our aim is to offer a standard frame that suits the artwork rather than a custom frame with a multitude of options for a customer to configure.  We don't want to offer much beyond a good quality relatively timeless style of frame in black, white or natural timber.

For customers who want hundreds of options of moulding type, mat colour and framing styles we can't recommend custom framing heartily enough.  Having your prints laid out in a framing studio with framing samples in front of you means you can see both colour and relative size of the framing components in relation to your art print or poster.  We support the custom framing industry in NZ to the tune of millions of dollars annually and are only offering framing to cater for the percentage of customers we have identified who only want to purchase artworks ready to hang (an obvious customer is someone purchasing a gift).

Custom Framing still recommended for the majority of customers

Custom framing means that you can match an artwork more closely to the room where the print is going.  Since artworks are no longer built into the physical fabric of the room (yes, pictures were originally placed in built in frames and were part of the actual wall! We've written previously about the surprisingly fascinating history of picture frames back in 2010) we think there is greater value in placing most emphasis on the frame's relationship to the picture than to its surroundings as a picture can be moved multiple times or go through several re-decorations over the typical life of a modern (long life ink) reproduction print.

Our conclusions & what's left to do before rolling out framing on every print site wide

Thanks to all our customers who have feed back on the different designs.  We have decided to have just one product page template for both art canvas and paper prints, the mounting options will be referred to as "Framing Options" even if the "framing" is actually stretching a canvas print around an internal wooden stretcher frame.  It just seems to cause less confusion than using technical words like "unstretched" and "stretched",  awkward when a customer orders a canvas print that arrives carefully rolled in a tube rather than ready to hang if that was what they were expecting - or vice versa a gift being taken on the plane abroad is not rolled in a tube but in a rather large and cumbersome box!

We have some minor work to be done around a new mini FAQ that will go onto every product page plus a bit of programming behind the scenes to manage and inform the delivery timeframes on framed prints - we won't be carrying all the prints in stock pre-framed! Delivery timeframes should be less than 10 days for a framed print around NZ, a pretty quick turnaround but not like our standard delivery of 3-5 days nationwide.  There is also the issue of delivering framed prints outside NZ in a cost effective manner, unless the print has very large overall dimensions we can physically ship the order but the cost of air freight - particularly to the US and Europe - is pretty daunting.

Framed Prints emerge from our stockroom

NZ vintage poster. Wooden frame (black) $NZ 209.95

Listed today were lots of new framed prints, a couple of one off picture framing examples and some clearance sale items.  It's still just $20 delivery for any number of framed prints shipped to one address.  Although we offer picture framing for all prints in stock with a turnaround of just over a week plus shipping time we are adding to the selection of framed prints and stretched canvas prints that we have on hand ready for immediate shipping (or pickup from our Christchurch gallery) as we come up to the Xmas gift buying season.  

In the 1970s NZ Fine Prints owned a picture moulding factory here in Christchurch (it was the time when "vertical integration" was a popular business strategy - I'm surprised the previous generation didn't invest in a tree plantation to grow the frames). This changed during the 1980s when our focus on to the mail order rather than the retail gallery side of the business meant we gradually dropped the framing operations, the slack taken up by the excellent network of custom picture framers that we continue to deliver to throughout NZ.  

"Piha 1969"  Framed reto print $NZ 129.00

However we realised several years ago that offering basic framing saves our customers the time and hassle of getting a print framed once it is purchased but this writer was surprised to discover that NZ Fine Prints have been testing a picture framing service for over three years but it is only now that we are about to roll out a complete "ready to hang" state to browse prints.co.nz (apart from showing only prints that have a framing option this will also change all canvas prints to the stretched canvas versions that are ready to go on the wall, not delivered rolled in a mailing tube).  It hasn't just been the Christchurch earthquakes, we had to spend a lot of time researching what kinds of frames print buyers actually wanted, and then source frames and picture framers whose work would last for decades (because our company's label will be on the back). A couple of examples from today's arrivals include the first of the retro views of NZ available framed (Piha, 1969 by Contour Creative Studio) and one of the vintage travel posters in a standard black wooden frame, the fly-fishing poster "New Zealand: For the World's Best Sport" designed by Maurice Poulton.

After the gift buying frenzy NZ Prints re-opens after the Xmas break

Xmas is always simply hectic. The sheer volume of gifts to be carefully packaged and dispatched on time not just in NZ but around the world makes it a real test of our systems. We make mistakes occasionally but our dispatch team will always try all alternatives to keep the customer (or gift recipient) happy if something has gone wrong. Xmas 2011 was Prints.co.nz's busiest ever with orders volumes up around twenty percent on 2010 albeit with a slightly lower average order amount meaning only a modest increase in print sales by dollar value.

After safely navigating through the Xmas gift season (our busiest time of the year) it was lovely to receive some complimentary emails that had been sent to our customer service team while New Zealand Fine Prints was closed for the Xmas/New Year holiday. Our favourite this year was the gift buyer who emailed us back "Thank you heaps. This picture brought tears of happiness to the recipient. Print is top quality, beautifully packaged with prompt delivery". Art is such a wonderful product to be selling - and to be spreading NZ's artistic culture onto walls everywhere with every print we sell is part of what gets us to work in the morning.

After a very eventful eighteen months in Christchurch with the ongoing earthquakes and our distribution and gallery moving from our home in Hereford St for nearly 50 years due to the quakes we look forward to 2012 being more benign for our staff and their families. This writer is looking forward to working on a series of NZ artist and print-maker profiles for NZ Art Print News (starting with controversial printmaker Lester Hall) and we are cataloguing our latest series of vintage NZ advertising posters, plus new prints from Dick Frizzell, Greg Straight, Fane Flaws and prints of landscape paintings by Wellington painter Ernest Papps.

And on a completely different note one of our staff snapped this incredible example of a NZ vernacular wooden picture frame while on holiday in the Marlborough Sounds. We are not sure if the framing style is one that would have a broad appeal in the framed wall art market today - but full marks for workmanship and dedication.

Picture hanging advice following the Christchurch earthquakes

Framed pictures dropped off walls in large numbers during the recent earthquakes in Christchurch.  NZ Fine Prints is based in Christchurch and we have been dealing with hundreds of insurance quotes for replacement or repair of damaged prints since September 2010. 

Our staff are frequently asked "How do we re-hang our pictures to minimise the risk of damaged artworks in future quakes?  So we decided to find out more about the seismic performance of picture hanging systems commonly used in NZ.  We were surprised to find that even the most basic system can actually do a pretty good job of protecting both the artwork and the occupants of the home, office or gallery (albeit with a couple of relatively minor tweaks).

The first piece of advice we have for hanging framed pictures in New Zealand's seismically active zones is don't hang any heavy artworks above your bed.  The average person spends a third of their lifetime in bed - simple arithmatic means that the chances of being in bed when an earthquake strikes are quite high and no picture hanging system can protect you from structural damage to the actual wall causing the artwork to drop on your head.

The traditional picture hanging method using wire or cord on a conventional picture hook (pictured below) can actually be easily modified to greatly reduce the risk of falling down according to Ian Cooke of leading NZ picture framing supplier Larson Juhl. Ian manages the South Island branch of Larson Juhl and has been in the picture framing industry for 30 years. He told us about a couple of simple tricks:

Conventional Picture Hooks (image courtesy Larson Juhl)

1. Close the gap in the hook making it less likely the cord will bounce through the gap.
2. Adequately secure the hook into the wall - into a stud if possible.

Gallery Hanging Track (image courtesy of Sydney Art & Framing Supplies)

According to Ian valuable artworks in galleries such as Christchurch Art Gallery which have security hangers behind the pictures also came through the earthquakes well because these types of hangers "allow the item to be slid down over two metal brackets and then further secured with a slotted security device at the bottom of the frame".

Another option is the gallery style hanging tracks that are about to be installed at NZ Fine Prints new gallery outside of Christchurch's CBD. This is a track that is securely screwed to the top of a wall employing a series of suspended nylon or fine wire droppers to which custom made hooks are attached (see picture above of a powder coated gallery style hanging track). The pictures are then hung from these hooks.  Ian Cooke tells us that "while the pictures swung around on the droppers" during the Christchurch quakes people have reported to him "they did not fall off".  Gallery hanging tracks such as the Stas brand which is stocked by Larson Juhl also have the benefit of letting galleries, homes and offices change their wall displays as often as they like without drilling new holes or damaging walls.

Picture Framing: A Short History of Framed Pictures

There is now a steady stream of framed pictures leaving our Christchurch gallery, the most popular being Mickey to Tiki in the black box frame (the example shown here at right is hanging on the wall of our gallery today). Since NZ Fine Prints started offering picture framing on all prints in stock we have already delivered ready framed just over 10% of the print titles that we carry. This means that we are getting a better idea of the cost of framing each print, which are the most popular prints (so we can make sure we keep these on hand) and also which colour frames are the most popular (the favourite frame colour is black because this goes with nearly all interior designs).  Picture framing outside of the pictures listed as being in stock in our framed prints collection is done to order.  Finding out more about your framing options and the cost of framing your prints is easy - just call us on NZ freecall 0800 800 ART.

Seeing all this picture framing going on has made us curious to know more about out the origins of the practice of framing pictures.  Back a couple of decades NZ Fine Prints was part owner of one of NZ's largest picture moulding manufacturers so we have been able to delve into our own company archives to literally dust off some books on the aesthetics and mechanics of picture framing in our quest to find out more about the history of framed prints (and along the way have seen a lot of changing picture framing fashions as well!).

The history of framed pictures went back a lot further than we expected. The fashion of having moveable art pictures in our homes and offices is not new, it goes back many generations. The story of the use of domestic (or vernacular) pictures has its orgins just over three hundred years ago when just over a third of "tradesmen" (i.e. semi-skilled workers) in Britain already had pictures on their walls (our source for many of these fascinating statistics is Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660-1760).

Before the Renaissance the movable panel-painting was the exception and the painter's craft ranged over a wide variety of surfaces integrating the work full with its public and the buildings in which these skills were employed. Over door and over mantel pictures were about the last examples of pictorial art to be united inseparably with their architectural setting.

The dominance of moveable pictures, (ie "easel painting") must be seen as a product of the Renaissance for by the late seventeenth century moveable pictures, paintings and prints were to be found in many interiors. The popularity of maps, usually shown hanging between rollers, can be seen as heralding the decline of limning (the use of solid gouache) and the rise of translucent watercolour which would not obliterate the printed line. The burgeoning use of moveable pictures of all kinds is particularly evident between about 1675 and 1725. In that half century some 35 percent of tradesmen owned pictures although only 4 percent of yeoman farmers did. This could point to an urban/rural divide contingent upon the cash economies of towns in contrast to the persistent barter in the country.These earliest picture frames were usually made by the artist - picture framing as a separate profession did not yet exist.

Early picture frames followed architectural practice and included a cill, as in a window, with the familiar mason's mitre. The general introduction to easel paintings by the early seventeenth century promoted the development of the picture frame as an object, not simply removed from architecture, but intended to isolate a picture from its surroundings.   The style of frame reflected the fashion of furniture at the time (see for instance the Baroque style antique picture frame pictured on the left) - this parallel between interior design and picture framing style is still strong today - many of the most popular contemporary framing styles in NZ  have strong, clean lines that reflect the trend for minimalism in our domestic and commercial interiors. This is an interesting area of uncovered ground for a New Zealand design student's thesis!

We are now enjoying researching how picture framing in New Zealand developed and will post our findings in the next article in what will be an occasional picture framing series.  We have already found that many of NZ's early artists made their own frames - a well-known example being C.F. Goldie whose distinctive style of a wide black oval wooden frame is still copied today when a print of one of his paintings is being framed. 

Framed Prints

Customers have reacted favourably to our initial picture framing trial - where via one of our publishers we offered framed prints from a selection of popular artists like Grahame Sydney and Diana Adams. Just over 400 framed prints were shipped during this trial pre Christmas so we have had plenty of opportunity to refine our processes before rolling out the new picture framing service on a much larger scale. From March 2009 we are now offering affordable and elegant picture framing for all prints in stock. Please contact us or call 0800 800 278 for a quote for framing your chosen prints. New Zealand wide delivery in extremely sturdy packaging is just $NZ20 per order (for any number of framed prints or posters) and delivery is in ten working days. We deliver framed prints world-wide by Airmail at cost - around $NZ 30 - $NZ 60 depending on the destination and size/weight of the print.

The illustration shows how prints were framed during the trial period (this style is known as a "box frame") and we offered three colours of picture frame - white, black and cream. Black is by far the most popular frame colour choice so far...