Guild Certified Framer exam

On Sunday 25th of June I travelled up to Scotland to sit my Guild Certified Framer exam. I was fortunate to receive a scholarship courtesy of Larson-Juhl to go through the relevant training and take the exam. Despite 10 years already in the industry, over the last year in preparation I have learnt so much and have undoubtedly made great leaps in my knowledge and execution across the board. Despite knowing this, I was nonetheless nervous!

I sat my exam with Ian Kenny who has been a great mentor through the whole scholarship process. He immediately put me at ease, and the feeling of ‘exam conditions’ seemed to dissipate. That is until I was handed the paperwork for the written exam! To my relief, I scored 100%. I had spent a lot of time with the study guide, and really getting my head around different conservation methods and materials and the different levels of framing, and this certainly showed.

There are 3 phases to the exam, and the second was to present 3 framed items to set specifications, have them cross examined, and to discuss certain framing choices. I will do a separate blog post that goes into more detail about these individually, but I received some very complimentary feedback. Two of these frames I hand-painted with Farrow and Ball paints, and finished with a varnish. This is something I want to experiment with and be able to offer customers looking for a perfect and unique finish and so I saw this as a good opportunity to hone these skills.

The final part of the exam is to get spot tested on a number of things. The first was to cut a multi-aperture window mount on a manual cutter, which was allegedly the best Ian had ever seen under exam conditions. We then talked about different conservation framing techniques for object and memorabilia framing. This way, the framed items can be removed from the frames in years to come without suffering any detrimental effects from the methods employed in the framing process.

I’m proud to say I am now a Guild Certified Framer. I have learnt so much along the way, and despite being a working framer for 10 years, I have skilled up so much over the course of the last year, thanks to working towards this exam. My learning journey will always continue, and I hope to work towards some advanced accreditations in the near future.