Platte River Art Services

	These early 20th C. trivets were handmade by the client’s deceased mother when she was a child. They were made under the tutelage of Native Americans indigenous to the Everglades where this woman was born. These items are typical of the heirlooms brought to us for preservation and exhibition, here shown before the frame was installed and closed.


This is a steel girder section from the remains of the World Trade Center, NYC. It was presented to the City of Denver for exhibit here and can be found in our City Hall. Platte River was selected to create the floor mount for it, as is shown in the second photo. Ian Blair, framer and welder, attaches the artifact to his fabrication in Civic Center prior to a news conference.

These two photos show beaded artifacts from a far eastern island group. Such items, brought in by traveling clients, are mounted to materials and backgrounds that not only show the items to their best advantage, but in a manner and with materials that will foster preservation of the item. Mounting processes are performed so that they are completely reversible.

Here are more heirloom items, displayed on a design table during the design and measuring phase of the projects. The first is a Chinese garment that we westerners would call a skirt. The other is a full body garment. These objects were from a family collection started in the 1920’s when the patriarch was in the Foreign Service.

This is an 8 foot, East Indian tabula in its hand-finished frame, ready to hang. It is delicately held in place with custom-fabricated mounts between two sheets of UV filtering plexi-glass. It is a two-sided, religiously themed object and the framing allows it to be studied from both sides. Platte River does about 3-4 similar objects every year.

Here’s Ian again, this time “closing” or “fitting” a very large, paper-borne artwork into its frame. Given the size, we had to use a sub-frame to stabilize the entire construction; and rather than a framer’s glazing point gun, Ian uses wood screws to fasten the sub-frame and exhibition frame together as a single unit. Things this large are installed on a cleat, not screw eyes and wire.


These two photos show the evolution of a hand-carved frame. The client brought in a Taos Founders painting and a photocopy of a frame they found in an old art book, a frame they wanted duplicated for their recent acquisition. The finished result was fantastic.

	This is a near 8 foot square presentation of three, Ching Dynasty throne covers. Stitch-mounted to a silk covered support in our frame shop and framed in a custom painted-and-gilded-and-carved frame, it was actually the glazing (glass) that was the biggest challenge. Two steel fabrications hold, along with the frame, three pieces of UV filtering plexi. A single sheet large enough for the entire piece is not available. The steel bars are in front of the seams joining the three embroideries, so everything seems “planned that way” – and it was.


The “Mini Chapeau Project” was challenging on several fronts. These 200-year-old objects are the actual mock ups of army uniform hats for Napoleon’s forces. Napoleon found drawings “inadequate” to examine the seasonal redesign and re-supply of his troops’ uniforms. (This mania supposedly gave rise to Paris’ seasonal fashion business.) The Napoleonic artifacts were purchased at Sotheby’s in London by a Denver man as a Valentine present for his wife. Platte River made the turned, wooden hat stands and researched the kinds of headgear these were and included that information on hand-lettered labels for each chapeau. Finally, the shadow box presentation was illuminated from inside the frame, top and bottom. The frames are about 3 feet x 4 feet, and the chapeau would fit an 18 inch tall figure.

This group of Andy Warhol serigraphs is being prepared for exhibit in a private collection in Evergreen. The 36 inch square silkscreens were framed to conservation standards in UV filtering plexi boxes and hung in a grid pattern two wide and four high in the client’s living room.