Lee Heckman Custom Framing & Gallery has been a full-service Pittsburgh picture framing business since 1984. We specialize in custom picture framing with a focus on creative design, friendly service, and proper conservation. The purpose of custom framing is to safely display and complement your artwork and to enhance the overall decor of your home. We offer unique and creative picture framing designs to showcase and preserve your memories, collectibles, heirlooms, and art. When you frame with us, you know that your project is going to be beautifully designed and impeccably crafted. We understand how important and valuable your treasures are, and we handle your items with care and respect. Call us or stop by our gallery for more information on our full line of services. What can we frame for you?
Our friendly designers will guide you through the frame design process, helping you choose the materials that best enhance your artwork and your decor. We work with you to create a finished product that suits your needs and fits your style. During our free consultation, we’ll discuss framing, matting, and how to best preserve your artwork.
Each project is custom-made just for you – all work is done on-location. We follow proper preservation practices to ensure that your project can be displayed & enjoyed for a lifetime. Our hard-working staff are true craftsmen with years of hands-on framing & design experience, so your treasures are safe with us.
We want you to absolutely love your finished project. When you frame with us, we want to make sure you are satisfied with your framing. If for any reason a client is not completely happy with the design of their project, we’ll make it right. We go the extra mile to ensure that your framing experience is fun and enjoyable.
Conservation Framing preserves the life and value of artwork and valued possessions. We specialize in creating a framing presentation that protects your artwork from dust, insects, indoor pollution, and the effects of time. Although aesthetic considerations are vital to any piece of art, conservation is of utmost importance when dealing with a work of any monetary, historical, or personal value. Lee Heckman uses only the best quality frames and conservation materials to protect your framed project – from acid-free & 100% cotton rag mats, to UV-filtering & museum glass. To us, family heirlooms are priceless and are treated that way. We make sure everything we do is reversible and can be put back to its original state.
Lee Heckman has a huge selection of custom frame mouldings. With hundreds of frame corner samples and mat choices, we can create the perfect framing design that’s just right for your artwork and your decor. We have a complete style range from contemporary to traditional. Fillets and fabric mats like linens, suedes, and raw silks add the finishing touch to your masterpiece.
The designers at Lee Heckman go the extra mile to make sure our customer’s experience is amazing. We want your framing project to be special from the second you walk in our door to the moment you view your frame on your wall. We are happy to source the art, frames, or materials that are just right for your project. If we don’t have it, we’ll find it for you. In a rush? We can offer fast turnaround. We’ve been known to chase down delivery drivers to make tight deadlines, and make special long distance trips to distributor hubs for our clients. Our willingness to take those extra steps helps provide you with the best possible service, because we care about what we do. It’s the little things, too – you’ll always find a smile and friendly conversation at our gallery.
In a hurry? We offer rush service and fast turnaround for almost all kinds of framing projects. Additional fees may apply. Give us a call to see how Lee Heckman can help.
Most framing projects are relatively straight forward and only require basic methods to complete. However, we regularly encounter situations that are more extraordinary, involving items that are extremely fragile, three dimensional, very large, or very heavy. How do you securely and attractively display these items without damaging them? Solving the challenges they present are one of the aspects of framing that we enjoy the most. We approach these challenges from an engineering perspective, applying advanced structural solutions to ensure the safest display.
In a typical framing project, the frame is the structural element, relying solely on the strength of the moulding for support. With an engineered approach, more often than not the backing becomes the structure to which the objects are attached and supported; the frame becomes more of a decorative element added at the end. Many times we will develop, manufacture, and create our own methods of attachment, support, and structure. To achieve this we use skills and materials not commonly found in the framing industry. These methods include welding, carpentry, and carving. We often utilize materials such as steel, stainless steel, aluminum, rubber, acrylic, laser cut and 3d printed parts, carbon fiber, led lighting, masonite, foam insulation, copper, pvc pipe, and more.
We pride ourselves on finding creative, attractive, sturdy and sound solutions to the challenges that are often presented to us by our customers.
This is a time capsule memorial we did for a local Synagogue. The Synagogue opened a time capsule after 98 years. Jeff Minsky framed the case, displaying the antique contents, and dedicated the display to the memory of his father. The project took about 2 years from concept to completion and was dedicated at a 100th year ceremony/celebration earlier in 2018.
We had a customer whose daughter came back from Africa with an elephant batik and a leftover piece of material from a dress she had made. Our customer wanted to use the material to create a mat, but it wasn’t big enough. We came up with the idea of cutting it into sections and piecing it back together. The final result was a unique, lovely piece!
Sometimes a frame needs a little bit of extra illumination. Using modern LED hardware, we engineered a custom lighting display for a shadowbox, taking care to hide the lighting mechanism and power cords. Each custom lighting project we take on is structured differently based on the artwork, the moulding depth, and the power supply; the end result is always dazzling.
We had a tight deadline to complete a framed sport jersey for a client. The client’s original moulding had excessive warpage; the third join was relatively easy but the fourth couldn’t be twisted into shape by the strength of two grown men. Drawing on our past experiences outside of framing, we called on an old carpentry technique of relief cuts to straighten the frame. After clamping each half to the work bench, we used a Dremel style tool with an abrasive cutting wheel to make parallel cuts across the moulding, five at each end of the long sides. This provided just enough ‘give’ to allow the warped frame legs to straighten. Because of our extra efforts, an unusable frame went together painlessly, and made the deadline.
