I am 68 and the first letter I have ever written to a shop is about a photo frame covered in soft white teddy fleece
I am 68 and the first letter I have ever written to a shop is about a photo frame covered in soft white teddy fleece
Six things these plush photo frames get right that photo frames always get wrong, from a woman who does not review photo frames.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Pat, I am 68, I live in Leeds with my husband Brian, and in fifty years of keeping house I have never once had a single thought about a photo frame worth writing down. Frames were the thin shiny things you bought in a rush, put a photograph in, and stopped seeing within the week. So this is not a review. It is a woman who thought a photo frame could not possibly matter, saying she was wrong.
The frames I am writing about are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. They do a whole collection of plush photo frames, and I own two of them as I write this. The Elowen, which has a wide border wrapped all over in white teddy fleece, curly and soft like a teddy bear’s ear. And the Valeria, soft cream fur with little red hearts scattered through it, the sweetest thing on my bedside table by a mile.
I first saw one at a christening do at the church hall, for my friend Sheila’s first great-grandchild. The other grandma had brought one as a gift, the white teddy one, with a picture of the baby already in it. It went round our whole table, hand to hand, and every woman did the same thing without thinking. Squeezed the corner of it. Nobody passes a photo frame round a table. This one got passed round twice. So I asked her, plainly, where it was from, and when the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
The two of mine on the sideboard, before the heart one moved to the bedroom. They do not stay put, because people keep picking them up.
Here is what fifty years of photo frames taught me. They come in two piles. The thin shiny pile, silver and glass from the supermarket, that all look the same and disappear on the shelf within days. And the ornate pile, heavy fancy things kept for best that cost more than the photograph deserves. I had a mantelpiece full of the first pile, and I had stopped seeing every single one of them, including the photographs inside.
Frames you stop noticing within a week, or frames that cost more than the photo deserves. Those were the options, and I had stopped arguing with them.
These plush ones are the first frames I have owned that are neither, and having lived with mine for a while now, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day they came. I ordered two expecting to send them back. They never went near the return post.
They are soft, and that changes how you treat a photograph
Start with the thing that made a table full of women at a christening pass a frame round like a newborn. The border is wide and deep and soft, and the moment it is in your hands you understand why the boutique bothered. You pick it up. You turn it over. You hold the photograph instead of glancing at it. In fifty years, nobody has ever picked a photo frame up off my shelf, and now they do it every time someone comes round. A photograph of somebody you love, in something soft enough to hold, turns out to be a different thing altogether from the same photograph behind cold glass.
The white teddy one in my hands. You will pick it up too. Everybody does.
The frame gets picked up more than the telly remote. My granddaughter cuddles it, which I did not expect from a photo frame.
Margaret W., BedaleThe white teddy one has lifted the whole mantelpiece
The Elowen stands on my mantelpiece now, in among frames I have had for twenty years, and it has quietly shown the lot of them up. That wide soft white border does something the thin shiny ones never did. It makes the photograph look chosen. Deliberate. Like something a person decided to display rather than something that ended up there. Visitors’ eyes go straight to it, and then to the photograph in it, which is rather the point of a photo frame when you think about it. I had honestly forgotten that was the point.
On the mantelpiece, making the rest of my frames look like they should apologise.
It is the first thing anyone comments on when they come in. My other frames have been demoted to the spare room.
Jean H., MashamThe heart one is for the photograph you love most
The Valeria is a different mood altogether. Soft cream fur with little red hearts scattered through it, and it sits on my bedside table with a photograph of Brian and me outside the caravan in it. It is the last thing I see at night and I am not the least bit embarrassed to say so. Some photographs are not for the mantelpiece and the visitors. They are for you. The heart one seems to have been made with exactly that in mind, and if you have a photograph like that in a drawer somewhere, you already know which one it is.
The heart one on my bedside table. That photograph lived in a drawer for eleven years. It does not any more.
I put a photo of my late husband in the heart one and it sits by my bed. I should have given that photograph a proper home years ago.
Dorothy A., PickeringFour sizes, matched to the photo paper you actually have
This is the practical bit, and it matters more than it sounds. They come in four sizes, made for five inch, six inch, seven inch and eight inch photo paper, the sizes photographs actually get printed at. The smallest frame is about sixteen by twenty centimetres and the largest about twenty three by twenty eight, so there is one for the little snap and one for the proper portrait. Every drawer in this country has photographs in it that never found a frame the right size. Now they can stop waiting.
Ordered the six inch for the grandchildren’s school photos and they fit perfectly. Went back for the big one the same week.
Sylvia R., EasingwoldThere is a design for every room in the house
Mine are the white teddy one and the heart one, and I would argue that is the right pair to start with. But the collection goes on and on. Boucle ones in cream and brown and black, tufted ones in cheerful colours, a rainbow one, fluffy ones in soft pastels, even football ones, which have solved the eternal question of what to get the grandsons. There are Christmas ones already in as well. The same soft idea in a different mood for every shelf, which is a dangerous thing to discover, as my sideboard can now confirm.
Started with one for the hallway and there are now four in the house. Each room seems to claim its own.
Barbara E., HelmsleyIt is the easiest present I have found in years
Think about what a photo frame as a gift actually says. It says, put a photograph of somebody you love in this. Now make it soft enough that the person unwrapping it hugs it before they have even found a photograph, and you have the gift that quietly won a christening. Since then I have sent one for a birthday and put one of the Christmas ones away for my sister June, because I know better than to let her see mine first. Everyone has photographs. Nobody has a frame like this. That is the whole trick of it.
Bought one as a new baby gift with a photo already in it. The mum cried, the frame got passed round the whole room. Best present I have given in years.
Pauline S., LedburyThe plush frames, against the frames you have been buying
You can pick up a thin silver frame for a few pounds anywhere, and I have spent fifty years doing exactly that. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Thin cold edges you stop seeing in a week
The same shiny silver as everyone else’s shelf
Glass that shows every fingermark
Never quite the size of the photo in your drawer
Nothing anybody has ever picked up
A wide soft border people reach for without thinking
A texture that lifts the whole shelf it stands on
Designs from teddy white to little red hearts
Four sizes matched to real photo paper
The most passed-round thing at the christening
About the price
The frames are £24.95 for the smallest size, rising to £29.95 for the largest, down from £50.00 and £60.00, and that goes across the whole collection, the teddy one, the heart one and all the rest.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that this is the sale run before the first autumn stock, and once a design sells through, that is that. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and after weeks of daily handling, one christening and an inspection by every woman who has been through my front room since, I have not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them across the collection, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
One ends up on the kitchen windowsill in the end. I am told this happens in every house.
If the photographs you love most are sitting in frames you stopped seeing years ago, or worse, in a drawer, this is where I would start. Go and look at the collection while the designs are all still there, and start with the person you would want to pick up.
Pat
THE PLUSH PHOTO FRAMES
- A wide soft plush border you pick up without thinking
- The white teddy Elowen and the red heart Valeria
- Four sizes, matched to five to eight inch photo paper
- Stands on its own on any shelf, mantel or bedside table
- A whole collection of designs, one for every room
- The easiest gift for anyone who owns a photograph
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.