The commission
A small piece by the shop's usual scale, but no less demanding of the joinery — mitred corners on a frame this narrow have almost no long-grain glue surface, so each corner is reinforced with a hidden spline let into a saw kerf, invisible from the front but carrying the real structural load of the joint. The reeding along the inner edge is hand-carved with a series of shallow parallel gouge cuts, deliberately left with faint tool marks rather than sanded to a machine-uniform finish.
Hung with a French cleat let into the back rail, sized to the frame’s actual weight rather than a generic hardware default.