Art Upgrade: The results show

You may recall that I was excited when Brett joined me for a special catalog sale at the auction house early this month. He doesn't attend often, which is perfectly understandable when I tell you that I left this week's Tuesday night consignment auction at 12:15 am and they weren't quite finished with the sale.

What was even more fun was that he found something he wanted. I was there for one painting, but there were a number of really great pieces, and he really liked the signed litho pictured above. He decided he wanted it, so I told him to go up and take one more look to be sure there wasn't some damage he missed, and it was fine. I loved it when the lot came up and he leaned over and said "Give me your number." And I was so proud when he let the auctioneer lower the opener before he bid.

As you can see (sort of, that's the picture from the catalog and it's a little bit dark), while it's a nice print with a vaguely arts-and-crafts era feel, the frame and matting are bad. The frame was as ugly as it appears, but what you likely can't see is how bad the mats were. The undermat looked like it was splattered with watercolor paint, and they both looked like they were cut with a steak knife. So we took it to the frame shop.

This is the print in it's new matting and frame. I picked it up after work today, and Brett and I couldn't be more pleased. The color in this picture is a bit misleading. The under mat is a brown very similar to the brown in the ground of the image. The top mat is actually an ivory that's not quite as white as it appears here, but we found that a lighter color really brightened up the print. The frame is a simple dark wood with grain that runs perpendicular to the edge. I have not used Thompson's Framing & Gallery over in KCK before, but I absolutely will again. The previous mat had burned the print a bit (the new ones are 100% rag), and they managed to mat out those marks and leave the series and signature intact.

And because it was his great choice, and his auction win, we hung it over his desk in the den. There's a second spring catalog sale coming up next month, guess who I'm inviting to be my date!