The remit for this Design Festival 2010 commission was to create an installation using materials sourced from John Jones, the renowned art framers. This immediately set the direction of the project: bespoke picture-frame mouldings in an array of sizes, profiles, materials, and colours became both the starting point and primary medium for the work.

During my exploration of the V&A in search of a suitable location, I was drawn to an elegant marble staircase. Its clean geometry, architectural rhythm, and sweeping ascent provided a compelling counterpart to the “right-angle” frame samples so familiar within the picture-framing industry. The inherent connection between these two forms—the staircase’s repeated angular steps and the precise corner joints of frame mouldings—became the conceptual foundation for the installation.

This visual analogy inspired the idea of cladding the entire staircase in a multitude of frame mouldings, transforming the architecture into a playful and immersive sculptural surface. The effect recalls a kind of three-dimensional graffiti—an unexpected intervention where the ornate language of bespoke framing spills outward from its usual context and colonises the traditional marble structure.

A narrow pathway, intentionally left uncovered—much like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz—guides visitors through the installation. This clear strip invites viewers to physically enter the work, encouraging them to move through, around, and alongside the cascading mouldings. The result is an installation that blurs boundaries between craft and architecture, decoration and structure, formal order and exuberant excess. It becomes both a celebration of the art of framing and a reimagining of the staircase as a dynamic, textural landscape.