The craft

Made to outlive
the trend.

The difference between a print and a portrait is what it is made of. A portrait is an object: it has weight, a surface you can read across the room, and edges finished well enough that it never needs a frame built for it. Ours is made to still be hanging, unfaded, long after the phone that took the photograph has gone.

The corner of Sensei's commission at forty-five degrees: the printed return edge wrapping a 38mm stretcher bar, and the tooth of the 400gsm canvas raking across the surface
Sensei’s commission · 400gsm canvas over a 38mm bar · the return edge
  • Canvas
    400gsm museum-grade canvas

    Heavyweight, finely woven, with a true painterly tooth. Thin photo-canvas reads as a poster stretched over a frame the moment you stand beside it; this does not. It is the same stock under every edition and every commission, because the size you choose should change the scale of the work and nothing else about it.

  • Medium
    Giclée, in archival pigment ink

    Twelve-channel pigment rather than dye, laid down at fine-art resolution. Pigment sits in the weave instead of soaking through it, which is why the reds stay deep and the golds stay warm for generations rather than for a few summers of window light.

  • Frame
    Hand-stretched over a 38mm gallery bar

    Deep enough to read as an object rather than as a print, and stretched by hand so the tension is even across the face. The image continues around all four sides — a gallery wrap, not a white border and not a mirrored edge — so it hangs finished, straight out of the box, with nothing to buy afterwards.

  • Origin
    Printed and finished in Britain

    Made to order in a UK atelier and dispatched from here, never drop-shipped from overseas. It is the reason a commission reaches a British wall in days rather than weeks, and the reason a problem with one is a conversation rather than a customs claim.

The specification

Medium
Giclée on 400gsm museum canvas, stretched by hand
Depth
38mm gallery bar, image wrapped on all four edges
Sizes
30 × 40 cm · 40 × 50 cm · 50 × 70 cm
Hanging
Ready to hang as it arrives · no frame required
Finished in
Britain, at the atelier in Reigate, Surrey

What arrives

A portrait that survives the post is part of the craft, not an afterthought to it. Everything below is how one leaves the atelier.

  1. Corner-protected and boxed

    Rigid corners on all four edges, faced and wrapped, in a box cut for the edition rather than the nearest size up.

  2. The certificate

    Every portrait is entered in the commission ledger and travels with its own numbered certificate, printed here and signed. It carries the sitter’s name, the archetype and the edition.

  3. Hung the same afternoon

    Nothing to assemble and nothing to frame. Hanging hardware is fitted, and the wrapped edges mean it reads as finished from every angle in the room.

Looking after it

Keep it off a wall in full afternoon sun and away from a radiator’s direct heat, as you would any painting. Dust it with a dry, soft cloth. Nothing else — no cleaner, no glass, no varnish.