#and it was made of like real butterly wings pinned together to make art it was so cool but also so fragile

[oflgtfol]

i love framing so much i love working with my hands and not thinking anything about life. 9 hour shift passes in no time bc i cease to exist as a person while im assembling frames im just some pair of hands and eyes

Anyway i took an order today for a woman framing her grandmother’s watercolor painting this shit is from 1971!!! ive framed some old stuff before but nobodys ever given me an exact date and to my knowledge even the vague “eh its pretty old”s havent been THIS old

look at this crusty old thang. the cardboard backing is like decaying before my eyes. i guess it had once been properly attached to the frame because when i pulled it out i saw - NAILS? when theyre supposed to be stapled into the frame but no this just had nails poking out. but even then the nails werent attached to the cardboard anymore so i was just able to pop the cardboard backing out real easily. and the wire is just plain metal its not like our modern wire that has the rubber tubing around it to make tying it safer + neater. and inside the frame itself the painting had a mat over it and i guess over the DECADES of existing like that, there was like this brownish border left behind on the paper around where the old mat had been

and the worst part. the part that made me audibly say “oh man :(“ while disassembling this. was that the paper had been scotch taped to the back of its original mat. i had to pry the scotch tape off and just the glue on the tape was barely there anymore it was so old and yet even despite that it still took away some shreds off the back of the paper. luckily the shreds were small and it was the back of the paper so nothing of the actual painting itself was damaged

overall just such an old crumbly fragile piece, i think this is one if the most fragile pieces ive ever worked on so far