14 Photography by Connor Hill
Your art’s in safe hands with framer Daniel Metcalf, as Dan Poynton discovers.
In Dan’s hands Pieces of art have to be looked after. While the original artist’s creation is revered, desired, it is also lugged about and handled for purposes of display or sale, and needs special measures to keep it in good shape. Frames by Daniel is a small Auckland firm that specialises in transporting and presenting art, employing great care and a fair bit of that mythical Kiwi ingenuity to keep the taonga from harm. ‘We sort of throw ourselves at anything we’re asked about,’ says
Daniel Metcalf, the versatile and pragmatic owner of Frames by Daniel. ‘If it’s reasonable we’ll tackle it.’ The Henderson-based company makes art-boards, stretchers, easels, plinths and boxes for freighting art to any specifications required. They also offer canvas stretching. Daniel set up a furniture building business soon after leaving school. An art-student friend was working for him and also doing bits and pieces for the local art students, and when he left to do his OE, Daniel took over his work and the business grew from there. Frames by Daniel has been going 15 years now, but it remains an intimate outfit with just one other full-timer and a couple of part-timers.
This, and some original methods of working, has allowed Daniel to keep his costs down and focus on his customers’ needs, he says. ‘I just like to be fair,’ says Daniel. ‘Artists don’t have a lot of money to spend and I’m about half the price of my competitors.’ For example, after checking out different ways of constructing artfreight boxes, Daniel came up with his own construction methods that are less labour-intensive than normal. ‘By keeping my prices low I get artists who buy more than just one thing, so I don’t lose out that much,’ he says. ‘I’m quite a creative person so I enjoy the challenge of some of the special stuff we have to do,’ he says,
