Framing the Steve Steigman Weaver Gallery Blown Away Posters (Maxell)
- John Leschak
- May 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 3
One of my favorite vintage posters are the Weaver Gallery posters from photographer Steve Steigman, used for the Maxell Blown Away Guy (or Guy in Chair) ads for Maxell Audio tapes in the 1980s. There are many of the free and $2 send away offer posters available, but the Weaver Gallery versions which were printed in France are getting more and more difficult to find in good condition (i.e. not mounted to backing boards or foam core and suitable for framing. Whenever I see them available, I will usually pick them up and its getting less and less often that they are coming available. The Blown Away Guys is easily going for $400 plus unframed and the Porsche Blown Away version going for $800 and higher (as of early 2025 anyway)....they are a good investment poster.
I have framed and sold several of these and they are a real pleasure to do them. The Porsche Blown Away posters are most often purchased by a Porsche owner and always generates some great dialog in the framing design process.
I have a specific framing style I think works great for these specific posters and recently a customer approached me from Gainesville, GA (a Porsche owner of course!) and he decided to get both of the posters for his garage, although they ended up in his music room. After some design discussions, we pretty much went with my recommended design but made some minor tweaks to the window cutouts for the "Weaver Gallery, Steve Steigman" window so that they would align in a way that worked best. The location is slightly different of that window between the two posters, so we wanted them to look symmetrical for the most part.
The basics material for this build include (all in duplicate):
Nielsen Profile 117 Aluminum frames in German Silver (get it...German...Porsche...) cut to 26" x 38" (+ 1/8" allowance)
Several sheets of acid free foam core cut to 26" x 38" (1 of the sheets black)
Sheet of acid free mat board used for the platform mount under the double mats
Crescent Select Concrete 9594 (Alpha Cellulose Acid-Free) top mat cut to 26" x 38"
Crescent Select Before Dark 9598 (Alpha Cellulose Acid-Free) bottom mat cut to 26" x 38"
Various normal custom framing supplies, glues, etc.
(A shout-out to Jason and the awesome team at International Moulding!)
The first time I framed one of these, I framed it at 24" x 36", leaving no real room for a supporting platform and it started to sag slightly in the middle. While I was able to remedy this, it is much more stable and more cosmetically pleasing by adding the extra inch to the edge.
This starts out with cutting the platform mount and getting it in the final place. You can see the painters tape on the corners to ensure there is no movement during the marking process on the mats. I don't use a Computerized Mat Cutter, and these are all done with a manual mat cutter. This will then get transferred to the mat board, but has to be done in a mirror image, that is why I do the marking on the edge and then flip the mat board over and mark on the opposite edge.
The green painters tape above is actually not sticking to the poster, I put some paper underneath the corner so it wouldn't actually adhere to the poster, but still hold it firmly. I don't have picture of the window markings and transferring them, but you should be able to figure that part out.
Then onto the mat cutting. The first time I did this mat layout, it took me 2 days. Now I can mark and cut top and bottom mat in 2 hours and get it right the first time.
I mentioned that we redid the "Weaver Gallery" window for the Blown Away Guy poster. I like that window to line up at the right edge of the main poster, but what happened is they are different locations and turned out that it had different widths on the left and right margin, so we recut to be better cosmetically.
So now we were ready to put the poster in the platform mount. I used some japanese tissue and Klucel-G to put some straight hinges in the middle to help limit/prevent sagging of the poster over time.
Once the hinges dried, we carefully glued the mats to the platform perimeter, normally I would not do this with the poster in place, but needed to this time since it was affixed at the top, but was very careful to ensure no PVA glue got to the poster.
After the glue dried, then the Tru Vue Conservation Clear glass was cut, cleaned and put on top of the mats. We discussed using acrylic, but customer really wanted glass. These were being shipped to Marietta GA, so just meant additional packing care.
The glass and backing were tape sealed, discussed in more detail here.
With Nielsen metal frames, they come with these springs that are used to fill the void, but I think they look terrible and I like to have the back look as good as the front. So I fill it will foam core with a final black foam core covering to ensure the void is filled but not super tight.
Then add the hanging hardware, bumpers, etc.
Since I just got a laser engraver and cutter, I decided why not make an upscale framer label!
Well, the results were stunning (IMO anyway)...these are statement pieces and was a pleasure todo these wonderful pieces.
Ship it!
I recently worked out a deal with someone to buy their lot of 10 New Old Stock of the mail-away posters.
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