Heredero de Crispín

When you think about your business, what are you most proud of?

Perhaps what I am most proud of is that all the work is absolutely personalised and handmade. At the same time it's what brings us upside down because doing work like this takes time and not everyone understands that.
Be that as it may, I have had the opportunity to do incredible work, both for the quality of the works that I have been able to manipulate and for the difficulty they have entailed, in fact some have been a real challenge and have turned out spectacular. I still remember a totally transparent bottle that had to be "floating" inside a glass urn that could be hung on the wall... it was hell, but seeing how happy the client was is something I can't get over.
Besides, having frames hung in some museums is something very satisfying, both because they wanted to count on me and for having the opportunity to work with works that are very difficult to find in the private sphere.

What is the history of your commerce?

Well, it all started by chance, fifteen years ago in the middle of the crisis and seeing that my sector, the restoration of works of art, was going down the drain, my former partner and I took over a workshop that was being transferred. After five years, in 2014, I decided to set up something on my own and Heredero de Crispín was born as a personal project in which I could combine my work as a restorer and my taste for antiques with framing work.
The rest has been done by word of mouth and lots and lots of hard work; we started in a small shop in Calle Moratín nº 25 and a couple of years ago we moved next door, to Costanilla de los Desamparados nº 6, where we have gained a few metres and a lot of light.

What is your professional experience?

My initial training is as a restorer of cultural property, specialising in painting. In fact, I spent years travelling and working on large projects until the 2008 crisis and the desire for change and greater stability led me to embark on this project.
I started learning with a professional framer who was retiring and then doing a thousand and one tests to offer many options, often succeeding and sometimes failing miserably. In fact, most of what I have learnt has been self-taught, seeing a lot of things and trying more, nothing just comes out of nowhere.

How has covid 19 affected your business?

What COVID brought us most was a lot of uncertainty and then a lot of debt to be able to continue, but the team is made up of 6 people and I didn't want to reduce the team due to circumstances beyond our control, even though they affected us fully.
Afterwards, it has brought us a lot of work, especially initially when people saw that their houses were not as nice as they would have liked and they dedicated themselves to decorating and beautifying them in case we were locked in again.

What services and products does your business provide?

The main work we carry out is the framing of works of art, from prints or reproductions to paintings or graphic works of great value. For this we offer many alternatives, from paper framing, which is one of our hallmarks, to more traditional frames, both in natural wood and in different decorations.
We also offer restoration work, especially painting, but we have external collaborators for other specialities, such as paper or decorative arts, which allows us to attend to clients with different types of works.
Finally, we have framed items for sale in the shop, which are the result of my visits to fairs and flea markets.