From posters to Picassos: Ed McGann frames it all

When Ed McGann was a little boy growing up in New Jersey, he didn't exactly dream about becoming a professional framer.

He always assumed he'd take over the family business doing roofing and siding. But when he finished high school, he headed down to Florida, where he learned everything there is to know about framing fine art from some of the best in the field.

“I never thought I'd be doing this for the rest of my life,” he said. “But here I am 31 years later and I love what I do.”

In those three decades, McGann has framed everything from cheap posters to original Picasso sketches, and even some hubcaps.

“I can frame anything, and in 30 years you see a lot of beautiful work,” he said with a sense of calm, casual confidence. Exposure to art through his framing work has also helped McGann curate his own collection of pieces, echoing his personal, more traditionalist taste.

Proper framing can make or break a piece, he said, and it really takes a good eye to pick the right matting, glass and framing material. It's clear that talking about himself is far from one of his favorite things to do, but there's no denying that quality trumps everything in each piece that moves through his workshop at Gallery 50 on Wilmington Avenue in Rehoboth Beach.

“The frame is an extension of the art work,” he said. “It preserves the piece and it makes it look nice. When I frame a piece, the back looks as good as the front.”

In his workshop behind the gallery, there is a tiny a wall of shame – a jumbled assortment of stickers reminding him of framing failures that hailed from other places, brought in to Gallery 50 to be rejuvenated through McGann's precise framing techniques.

“Sometimes people skimp on the glass, the backing, the moulding,” he said. “But you can go out and spend $120 on one meal that's gone the next day. This might be $250, but you'll have it for the rest of your life.”

McGann’s precision and practiced eye for finding all the different elements to best accentuate a piece of art or a family photograph is just part of what keeps customers coming back, generation after generation.

“Now I'm on third-generation families,” he said. Throughout the years, he's seen children grow up, both in photos and in person; he’s watched families nurture a new love of art for future generations. And it's not just locals who flock to Gallery 50 for McGann's magic touch. Repeat customers from Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. find their way to Delaware's beaches for the sand and surf, but also for McGann's framing mastery.

“Nearly every time I meet a new customer, they're friends the next time they come in,” McGann said with a light-hearted smirk. “I try to be fun with people and make their experience pleasant. Everyone knows I have a sense of humor. Other than that, I'm fairly boring.”

For customers seeking out McGann – following him from gallery to gallery or traveling across the country for his handiwork – the experience is clearly more than putting some pieces of wood around a picture, said Eric Davison, owner of Gallery 50.

Davison admits the first time they worked together he was a little thrown off by McGann's sometimes saucy rapport with customers.

“It's part of his charm,” Davison said with a chuckle. “A lot of customers are drawn to that very much. Especially a lot of our older customers who've been seeing Ed for a while, that's why they come in – to enjoy some of that banter with him.”

During the winter months, when local customers are gone during the offseason, they have a lot of catching up to do when they come back to town.

“I've come in many times while he's working and there are customers sitting there and telling him their life story,” Davison said. “And it never ceases to amaze me that we still have people coming in saying they've been looking for Ed, and here he is!”

Beyond the light-hearted jokes and witty banter McGann throws around, hetakes his work very seriously, Davison said, and is as dependable as he is sarcastic.

“He's always been here when I've needed him,” Davison said. “This street notoriously floods. It can start raining in the middle of the night, and he'll send me a text to say he's on his way to make sure everything's OK. People keep coming back because he's a master at his craft, but it's also very much about him and his personality. He's just a terrific guy.”