We are a frame shop in the Castro. The Grateful Dead are from the Haight. In San Francisco terms, that makes this one a neighborhood project.
Last summer Dead & Company brought 60,000 people a night to Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field for three nights to celebrate 60 years of the Grateful Dead – a band that is as much a part of this city’s identity as the fog and the hills. A client came in with the official celebration poster from that run and wanted it framed properly. We were happy to oblige.
Why poster framing deserves more thought than people give it
Concert posters are one of the most commonly under-framed things we see. People roll them up, stick them in a tube, or throw them in a cheap frame with standard glass and call it done. And then ten years later the colors have faded, the paper has yellowed and something that was worth preserving is just a shadow of what it was.
The art on a well-made concert poster and Grateful Dead poster art in particular has a long and celebrated history going back to the psychedelic print shops of Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s and it deserves the same conservation approach as any work on paper. The colors are vivid, the paper is often high quality, and the cultural and personal value only grows over time
The glazing: museum glass with UV protection and anti-glare
The first decision was the glass, and for a poster with this much color in it the answer was straightforward. We used museum glass with 99% UV protection and an anti-reflective coating, so there is virtually no glare and no reflection standing between you and the image.
UV damage is the quiet enemy of any framed piece. It is cumulative and completely invisible until it is too late: colors shift gradually, paper yellows, and the contrast that made the piece worth looking at in the first place slowly disappears. Museum glass stops that process. It also keeps the paper stable by reducing the heat that standard glass allows to build up behind it.
We also added a spacer between the poster and the glass. This keeps the paper from touching the glazing directly, which over time can cause sticking and damage, and it gives the piece a little depth that reads well on the wall.
The frame: black ribbed
For the frame we chose a black ribbed profile. The ribbed texture runs along the face of the frame and adds just enough visual interest to feel period-appropriate – there is something about that tactile surface that sits naturally alongside the graphic energy of Grateful Dead poster art – without pulling focus from the image itself.
We could have gone with a flat black frame and kept it completely minimal, but the Ribbed Tribeca adds a layer of character that the poster rewards. It is a frame that knows what era it is referencing without being costumey about it.
Poster framing at our Castro shop
Concert posters, vintage prints, event posters, exhibition posters – we frame all of it here, and the approach is always the same. Good glazing, the right mount, a frame that serves the piece. We have been doing this in the Castro for over 40 years and we still find this kind of project genuinely satisfying.
If you have a poster sitting in a tube or rolled up somewhere waiting for the right moment, this is a good time to bring it in.
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