Company Spotlight
When people look at a painting, they don’t usually notice the frame unless there is something wrong with it.
“A frame for a piece of art is like a dress for a woman. It can be sloppy or garish, or it can be fitting and tasteful,” said artist Natalia Domovitskikh. “Unframed work is only a half of a work, and a poorly framed work is a spoiled one.”
For seven years now, the Pyrohov family’s business has been involved in helping Kyivans properly “dress” their artwork.
There isn’t a lot of price competition among the 10 or so large framing shops in Kyiv. What does make a difference to customers is the framer’s craftsmanship and the materials used. The Pyrohov family, who operate Baget Salon, think that good taste and a willingness to help are important as well.
An artist and medal maker, Domovitskikh has had her works framed at the Baget Salon for three years.
“[In Baget Salon] you don’t find the arrogance of many centrally located salons, where you walk in and no one cares about you,” Domovitskikh said. “Here they feel for your artwork, and want to help, rather than just profit from you.”
Customer care is the chief factor in the company’s success, the owners say.
“People who come to us once remain our clients and they bring their friends,” said Salon Baget’s consultant Natalia Kuprienko.
The family has decided to rely chiefly on word of mouth and their strong reputation to keep customers coming. Co‑owner Olena Pyrohova said that the number of orders the shop has depends chiefly on the existing network of clients.
While Pyrohov Company is well known to Kyiv’s artists, artists make up only about a half of its clientele. The shop’s other source of customers are individual art owners as well as exhibit organizers, including the embassies of The Netherlands, Israel and Poland; art galleries like “36” and Triptych; and exhibitors, like Kontraktovy Dim.
The family has found that the most efficient way to fight competition and build the business is to increase the number of outlets, Pyrohova said.
In 1994, Pyrohova’s father, art restorer and carver Volodymyr Pyrohov opened his first workshop. Two years ago, they opened Baget Salon on Saksahanskoho and then another one, on Desyatynna last April.
The family is hoping to open one or two additional salons in central Kyiv by the end of this year.
“In this kind of business, there are no huge rises and falls,” Pyrohova said. “Everything goes smoothly and calmly.”
Running the business keeps both owners – Pyrohov as a master and Pyrohova as a consultant – and 10 employees busy. The business doesn’t earn huge profits, and the owners say that they have to work all the time to keep it going.
Pyrohova declined to disclose financial information about the family business, but said that the company, through two salons and a workshop, frames more than 500 works of art every month. In addition, the firm occasionally takes on large consignments of between 100 to 300 frames for exhibits or award ceremonies.
Pyrohova said that her salons can frame “anything that can be put on a wall” – paintings, graphic works, photos, posters, embroidery and tapestry. Less traditional orders have included icon cases, frames for butterfly collections and medal displays and restoration work.
The company takes pride in having created a tabernacle for the Vvedenska Church in Pechersk and a case for the church’s icon, which is said to work miracles.
Despite the occasional unusual order, the most frequently framed works are oil paintings.
The salons offer more than 400 kinds of fillets, made in Italy, England and Czech Republic, as well as mats and non‑glare glass for graphic works.
Framing is a collaborative process, and like the paintings they surround, each frame is different. Clients’ artwork is placed on a stand, where the customer and a salon consultant can experiment, trying different combinations and ideas.
Once a design is chosen, the cost is calculated and the art is sent to the workshop. Most finished orders are ready the next day.
Another thing clients appreciate about the Baget Salon is the flexible prices. Same artwork can be framed for Hr 30 to Hr 400, depending on what kind of fillet is used. Wooden fillets are more expensive, and plastic ones much less.
“We always try to find a balance between the artwork’s needs and the client’s finances. We calculate numerous options,” Pyrohova said. As a result, clients range from prosperous businessmen to women who bring in their embroidery.
If the client is not sure, the salon consultants will always help find the right frame. “Even though we are artists, we often ask for advice [from salon consultants]. They show us all they have, help us pick something out and make recommendations,” Domovitskikh said.
Finding a matching frame is the most exciting part of her work for Pyrohova, an industrial designer and graphic artist by education.
“Each work is alive, and if you set it in a wrong frame, you can kill it,” Pyrohova said. “We strive to find a frame to accentuate the work and make it play.”
Pyrohova said customers often have preconceived ideas about what they want. “People often want white frames for their light works,” Pyrohova said. “But a white frame will stand out, making the white hues on the painting seem dirty.”
“Many people don’t like gold frames, but they are traditional. Gold underlining brings more warmth to the work and colors begin to glow.”
For Pyrohova, the most difficult situation is when a client’s tastes conflict with artistic good sense. “People will say ‘I’ll hang this painting above a blue sofa, so the frame must be blue,’” Pyrohova said. “Dissuading them is practically impossible. So, I give up and say ‘It’s your work, you’ll be looking at it.’”
In a way, Pyrohov Company has helped to shape Kyivans’ artistic taste. Only a few years ago, most works sold on Andriyivsky Uzviz were poorly framed: The artists took flooring planks, painted them, glued on a golden strip and framed their art. Today many of them come to Baget Salon.
Domovitskikh and her partner Oksana Teryokhina claim to have introduced the concept of framed award certificates to Ukraine, crediting the Pyrohov Company. In 1998, the artists gave out the Dovzhenko Cinema Prize medals and diplomas. After the ceremony, they began to receive calls from government officials asking where they framed the certificates – before, they had been bare sheets of paper.
Today, 90 percent of diplomas given out from the stage are framed – many by the Pyrohovs.
“We introduced the European way of presenting awards, and this European level we discovered at the Pyrohovs’ salons,” Domovitskikh said.
