- You know when we look at artwork, we're hyper-focused on what's on the canvas.

That's the whole point.

And this series is an attempt to go behind the canvas and showcase all the work, all the creativity, all the artisans that make sure that art exists.

And today we're going behind the canvas, literally, to see what holds it all together.

(lively music) I'm Julian Baumgartner.

As a fine art conservator over the past two decades working to preserve artworks, I've been fortunate enough to meet and work with some of the most talented, driven and interesting people in the arts.

And now I wanna take you into their worlds to meet them, hear their stories and share their passions.

So join me as we go "Behind The Canvas".

(lively music) Historically, there has been no more important place for American art than New York.

And that's where we are today in the Brooklyn workshop of Simon Liu.

Simon.

- Yes.

Hi, Julian.

- Well, it's a pleasure to finally meet you.

I've been working with you for my entire career which is 26 years and my father for, I don't know, 15 or 20 before.

And this is the first time I've ever actually put a face with the name.

So this for me is pretty special.

- Wow.

- Because I've been using your supports for my entire career and they're really one of the highlights of when I get to work on paintings.

So I feel like I'm in a really special place.

So thank you for having me.

- Well, thank you for coming.

- I'm super excited to see- - I'm excited.

- Behind the canvas.

So let's get started, right.

We start where?

With wood, right?

- With wood, yeah.

You know we primarily use two species.

In your father's time and my time, we had sugar pine.

But now there's no longer.

- Oh okay, so you had to switch.

- [Simon] So we use eastern white pine.

- [Julian] Okay.

- And basswood is a hardwood, but it's on the soft side.

So when you do a lot of stapling or temporary tacking, it's easy to remove the fastener.

- And I like that.

- Right, if you use any kind of hardwood and you break it in there, then you have to do some kind of tooth extraction.

(laughs) - Tell me about it.

I know.

It's the bane of my existence.

So we're in an office, right.

There's no wood here, well, there's a lot of beautiful wood here, but this is not where it starts, right?

- Well, let's go downstairs.

- [Julian] Okay.

Yeah.

(lively music) Simon, these doors, did you make them?

- [Simon] Yeah.

This is polyester with fiberglass.

- [Julian] Okay.

- So I went to a DuPont company out in Long Island.

And I saw these and these were like surplus materials.

I bought a whole bunch of them.

And I said, "Wow, these are good material to make a door."

- And now look, it's two doors.

- Yes.

- It's a small, like human-sized door and then a gigantic door.

Why is there a bigger door?

- Because we sometimes deal with large painting that need to go in and out.

- [Julian] Of course.

- And we have a little studio there that do some kind of that- - That's so cool.

- I'm not taking over your job, but we do, do a lot of stretching for large pieces.

- [Julian] That's so cool.

- And work on them and even simple strip lining.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, now you're getting into my territory.

- Uh-oh.

(laughs) - [Julian] Let's go see that wood.

All right, so we're headed downstairs?

- [Simon] We're heading downstairs.

Sometimes it's quite a chore to bring the lumber in because it's on a lower level.

- Have you always been in this location?

- No, I've been moving around quite a number of places.

At one time we had two buildings.

- [Julian] Okay.

- Eventually we get rid of a building and consolidate into this one about eight years ago.

- So this is the mill shop, right?

We have the machinery that cuts the wood, makes the joints.

This is where the wood gets turned from raw lumber into profiles and supports, right?

- For continuous bevel stretcher, we process it here.

Because once we get a plank, we're gonna rip them to the width that we needed.

- Right.

All done in-house.

- And then we're done in-house.

But there are other L-shaped profile or T-shaped profile of stretcher bar, we have to mill somewhere.

- Gotcha, so you partner with another mill to make these profiles.

- Those are the big company that they mill in thousands of square feet.

- Gotcha, gotcha.

- The difficulty having a business, especially woodworking shop in the city, is how to get rid of the waste.

- Oh, yeah.

- So, we have bags and bags of shaving.

- Nobody wants it, right.

- Nobody wants it.

And then at one time we did send it to a horse stable.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, but you know, eventually- - Where's a horse stable in New York?

So what kind of wood is this?

- Well, this is Appalachian basswood.

- [Julian] Okay.

- Basswood is a hardwood product, but it's on the soft side.

- Right.

- Now, we don't use the southern basswood because it's too soft.

It's for carving.

- Okay.

- Northern basswood, it's a little hard and they come in a very narrow and short length.

- So why is it important that it's a soft hardwood?

- Well, if it's built out of hardwood, it's very hard to extract.

Let's say, if you use staple or tack temporary, it may break into the wood when you try to take the staple off.

- That's right.

I know all about that, yeah.

- And also too, the harder the wood, the harder to make the joint tight.

Because if you make it exactly the same, once you put the tenon into the mortise, it doesn't have any room to give.

- Right.

- So for traditional stretcher with a double-finger miter joint, it flares out.

- Oh, I see.

- It doesn't have the ability like a soft wood that you can kind of like a tuning fork they're clamped in.

- So the wood selection is really important to maintaining the stability of the stretcher and its longevity.

- Yeah.

- It's not just any, you know wood isn't wood isn't wood.

A specific species- - Correct.

- The specific hardness matters so that the stretcher lasts 100, 200 years.

So all of this wood we're seeing here, the basswood and the pine, these are all gonna become supports for artists?

- Not just for artists.

It's for conservator that require a thinner profile.

- Oh, so picky people like me who make you jump through hoops.

- We have conservators say, "Okay, I want this huge gigantic stretcher."

It's like, oh, the original stretcher is only three-quarter inch thick or one inch thick.

It's like, okay, so we have to consider- - Right, right.

So all this wood will eventually be behind some canvas?

- [Simon] Yes.

- That's really cool.

So Simon, I mentioned earlier that my father bought stretchers from you.

- Right.

- For many years before I came on the scene.

And I've been buying from you for as long as I've been doing this.

- Right.

- When did you actually start making stretchers?

- Well, to make that kind of conservation type of stretcher is a little bit later than I tried to build something for myself with some friends when I was studying my MFA program in Pratt Institute.

- So you were at Pratt?

- In Brooklyn.

- And you were studying to be an artist?

- Right.

- And you, like most artists, needed something and so you made it.

- Well, because I wasn't satisfied what I buy in the store.

- Ah, okay.

So it didn't meet your standards and so you decided that you just had to do it yourself.

- Right, right, right.

- Okay.

- At that time I was mainly building strainer stretchers.

- Right.

And so then that turned into a business where you started- - It actually turned into business because I'm also had engineering background so that I tried to do a lot of research.

- Gotcha.

- And trying to figure out, okay, what is a traditional stretcher, how the joinery work, the angle of the key.

- [Julian] Okay.

- Right, the type of thickness of the mortise and tenon to maximize the strength of your joinery.

- So you really, you fell down a rabbit hole with supports?

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Right?

A lot of research, a lot of time devoted to it.

- Right.

- And then out of it, you woke up one day and said, "All right, I have a company."

- That's my passion.

Yeah, this is my life.

- That's really cool.

(lively music) So Simon, there's a little yellow Volkswagen up in the office.

It's a little model and there's pictures all over that.

I have to ask what that's about.

- (laughing) Well, when I didn't have a delivery van, I would put my product on top of the Volkswagen Beetle.

- [Julian] Oh, no.

- I would drive around to do a delivery and maybe put up some little poster in Soho on a lamppost and, you know- - Well, I can't endorse putting things on top of a Volkswagen Beetle, but it seemed to have worked for you, so I won't second guess.

- (laughing) Well, it's hard because the top is in the dome shape.

- [Julian] Yeah.

- So I have to make a little like a rack.

- [Julian] Oh, my gosh.

- But sometimes it's a challenge when you try to put a large piece of stretched canvas on it without being blown off by the wind or something, you know?

Like fly in the air.

- It's making me, I don't wanna hear anymore about that.

- Let's see how we're gonna do the profile in-house.

- Okay.

- Yeah?

- After you.

- An L-shaped profile.

Yeah.

- All right.

So this is the L-shaped profile that you guys have?

- Correct.

- All right, so Simon, I know why this is important.

I use these all the time when I'm conserving artworks, million dollar paintings or just sentimental paintings.

I understand why this is a really high-quality product, but why is this different than what an artist could find in their art supply store?

- Um-hmm-hmm.

Well, if you have a rectangular piece of lumber and you create that profile, like a lip and then going down- - And that lip is to keep the back of the canvas off of this, right.

- Yeah, the stretcher bar.

So I take one step further because I used to have to mill with that profile in one piece of wood.

- So one piece of wood runs through- - And it's always curled up and sometimes it twists too.

- Gotcha.

- [Simon] So you end up with a lot of lumber that is not usable.

- Okay, so there's waste and the precision isn't there.

- No.

Right.

- And maybe on a little stretcher that doesn't matter so much, but as you get bigger- - Oh, you still have little stretchers that you buy in the store that sometimes people come to me, it's like they put it on the flat top.

It's like a rock.

- Okay.

- Even one foot square.

- So even small ones are really affected by that process?

- Of course, yes.

- Okay, so then you decided to do something different, which is a tongue and groove.

- [Simon] Right.

- And it's two pieces of wood.

- [Simon] Right.

- Is this more labor intensive?

- Of course, yeah.

So we have a big company that'll mill that to our specification.

- [Julian] Okay.

- We have three or four different profiles.

- And so I'm looking down this piece of wood.

- Um-hmm.

- It is, I mean, it is- - [Simon] Relatively straight.

- There is almost no deflection here.

- Well, it's long.

That's why I think, you know when you lift it up the weight itself- - Sure.

- But when you look at it like this, it's pretty straight.

- And so this is what makes for a really good support.

It's straight.

It's true.

It's not gonna twist.

It's not gonna get all wonky.

So then from this big stock here- - [Simon] Yeah.

- How does it actually get turned into a support?

- For traditional stretcher, you do a straight cut to the exact length that you want.

Now, our accuracy up to like 32nd of an inch, right.

- And you do that here?

- We do it here, yeah.

- You cut everything downstairs here?

You wanna show me?

- Yeah.

- [Julian] The precision and care that Simon creates throughout each step of the process from wood selection to profile creation and the complex joinery is impressive.

For any errors will not only compromise the integrity of the support, but will ripple forward to the final piece of art, jeopardizing the magic on the canvas.

At the heart of every stretcher is the double-fingered miter joint, a floating joint without glue or nails that allows the expansion of the stretcher through the use of keys that get tapped into a mortise.

- Ah, morning.

- Morning.

- [Julian] Good morning.

How are you?

- [Simon] (speaks in foreign language) We have some joiners already cut.

- [Simon] Oh yeah, I recognize this.

- Yeah.

Okay.

So this is the kind of stretcher that has a very thin profile.

- Right.

- Usually it's for you guys.

- Yes.

- You know conserving old work that came from a very poorly made thin profile stretcher.

Right, so before we finish this... First of all, we have to dimension the stock.

- So after the stock has been milled to your specifications- - Right.

- And it's ready to be turned into a support.

You then have to cut in the double-fingered miter joint.

Got that right?

- Correct.

Yes.

- Okay, double-fingered miter joint.

And that's this complicated joint right here that holds the support together and that, I take, happens on these machines?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- The joint is a mirror joint.

It's almost like a pinwheel- - [Julian] Oh, I see, so- - You have the left side and the right side.

- Right.

- But they're identical.

When you flip it over, it's exactly the same.

- Right.

Okay.

- So you have to index it right in the center and then cut your key slot on this side.

- Right.

Which is this, which enables the support to expand.

- And for this end here, you got your key slot on the other side.

- Right.

- So when you put it together, it fit perfectly.

- That's a small detail?

- There was one time my guy cut the left-hand joint, the right-hand joint and forgot about it.

It was hundred pieces.

You can't put it together.

- Oh, yeah.

Right.

- Because they hit each other.

- Right.

So this isn't done by hand.

This is done on this fancy, scary looking machine.

And this is a woodworking machine you said that is a hand mill?

- Yeah, it's a woodworking machine.

You can buy a hand milling machine, but usually the capacity is small.

Oh, this is a more industrial shaper with a sliding table.

- [Julian] Gotcha.

- Right, so the position is where the slider, the table is so that you don't have any kind of rocking motion.

- Okay.

I see.

- So first step is that machine over there.

- This guy?

- Right.

- So this is another shaper, but it's got a different blade on here.

- Tooling, yeah.

Um-hmm.

- A different tooling.

And this looks like it's just one blade.

- Right, but you can't buy it in a hardware store.

- No, I figured.

- What they call it is a slotter.

- [Julian] Oh, okay.

- You cut a slot.

- Oh, that?

- Basically this is where the, yeah, exactly.

- [Julian] Okay.

- Now, when I start making traditional stretcher, before your dad's time, later on I start making a stretcher for him.

And it's very hard to compromise to find a good angle.

So when you put your key in there, when you expand the piece, that it's not overly extend quickly.

- Yeah.

- Or you don't want it to be so slow that when your key's starting to protrude out from this end here- - Or it's the wrong fit and the key breaks.

- It's the wrong fit, the key.

- And then my life just got really difficult because I gotta take it all apart.

- Right.

- And start all over again.

- Yeah, the angle of my key, I found out like 16 and a half, 17 degrees is- - Is that trade secret?

We have to blur that out?

- No, that's okay.

- Okay.

- But - - Better that everybody does it the right way.

Yeah.

- Well also too, the slot ends where exactly the width of the stretcher bar, right here.

- Right.

- So a lot of time you buy sloppy stretcher bar and they end up with a big hole in the back there.

- I know.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Or sometimes they cut this off so that you can fit that in there because the slot was too small.

- [Julian] Right, so they're having to compensate for doing a bad job on the... Yeah.

Okay.

- So after this is cut, now first of all, this is a mirror joint.

So you cut this on this side like this and you have to flip it over this way.

- Then you got to flip it over.

Right, otherwise- - If you turn it this way, then you're gonna end up with the sad story that I told you about.

- Then you end up sweeping the floors.

Okay, so this cuts the key slot.

- [Simon] That's right.

- And then after this is done- - Um-hmm, right.

- Then it goes- - To that one.

- To that machine.

All right.

And so what does this guy do?

- So this was set in 17 degree to the vertical.

90 degree to the table.

- Okay, 17.

- [Simon] This 45 degree to it.

- [Julian] Right.

- Right now this machine, you shape off and cut off the top and the bottom and create a miter joint.

- [Julian] Right, so it creates this miter joint and leaves this tenon.

- And leaves the tendon.

So that's why sometimes when conservators say, "Well, I need a stretcher four inches long in the stretcher bar."

I say, "Well, that's a little dangerous for my guy to cut it."

- Gotcha.

- But I did make a stretcher that is so small that it's also keyable.

But sometime you convince them, "Eh."

- I know you've done that to me.

- Do a strainer, you know?

That's okay.

You don't need to key things out.

But still, we can make it for you.

- But that's one of the really interesting things, because I know that as a conservator I'm really picky and I'm always contacting you and saying, "I need this, I need that.

This thickness, that thickness."

And you know sometimes I have in my head the idea of what I think is gonna work.

And maybe artists too, they think, "Oh, well, I need this and that."

And then we contact you and you say, "No, that's wrong.

Do it this way."

Because you're the expert.

You know exactly how the wood is gonna react.

You know what's the best for the support.

And having a resource like that, for me, is really invaluable because while I think I know everything, the truth is I don't.

And that's why I come to you because you know this stuff and you'll tell me, "No, no, no, Julian, that's too thin of a stretcher bar.

It needs to be a little bit thicker.

Or have you thought about this profile because it would fit this painting better?"

So having a resource that not only can make them with a high degree of precision, but understands what they're making and why is invaluable.

And for conservators, obviously that's a no-brainer, but I can see for artists too to be able to reach out to Simon Liu Incorporated and say, "Hey, this is what I wanna do.

Help me design a support that's gonna achieve that."

That's something you just can't get when you go to an art store.

- The difficulty too, try to make the joint that is good enough for tightness and at the same time, dimensionally accurate.

Let me point out what the secret is for you.

- [Julian] Okay, tell me.

I wanna know.

- So when you do the cutting here, you have to cut the miter to the exactly where the corner- - Right.

- Is to stop.

- Yeah.

There's no gap here.

- [Simon] There is no gap.

- [Julian] It is as precise as it can be.

- [Simon] Right.

- Which means that when they go together, you have almost like a furniture joint.

Probably, better than most furniture joints.

- Oh yes, 'cause there's no much sanding to adjust it.

Otherwise, you lose your dimension.

- Right.

Right.

So precision matters.

- Yeah.

So let's say, if you get a store-bought stretcher, sometimes they cut it too much.

- [Julian] Um-hmm.

- Then you got a shorter stretcher bar.

- I know and those go in the garbage.

- And you stretch it out and then you get a bigger dimension that you cannot fit your painting in.

- Right.

Okay, so after we've cut the double-finger miter joint, I'll get it.

After we've cut the double-finger miter joint, then what happens?

Because I'm noticing that this is still just a S4S, right?

- Yeah.

- So it's surfaced four sides.

- Right.

- 90 degrees.

But this we can't use to make a stretcher yet.

- [Simon] Not yet.

- All right, so what happens to this to get it to a stretcher?

- Well, it depends on you need crossbar or not, right?

So you need to cut the mortise.

- Right.

So you have the mortise here.

- The mortises are over there.

- Right and that can cut the slot for the crossbar to go in.

- [Simon] Correct.

- And then what happens to it?

- You cut the continuous bevel on one side.

- [Julian] And that's not here.

- That's over there.

- Let's go.

(lively music) It's amazing for me to think of how many thousands of paintings from old masters to future history makers depend on the humble sticks of wood transformed into everlasting supports that Simon creates.

Okay, so the continuous bevel creates that lip and that's done here with this gigantic looking blade.

This looks like a beast.

- That is known as a 16 inch blade that can cut some things when our bar is four and a half inches- - Wow.

Yeah.

- Wide.

- [Julian] So that's a big- - If you have sometime have a big mural- - Yeah.

- Require traditional stretcher, that's what we have to use, four to four and a half inches deep.

- Right.

And so this is on an angle.

- [Simon] Right.

- And then it just gets- - We try to limit it to about five degree.

Not so much.

It's because you can start cutting into the key slot and compromise the string.

- [Julian] Right.

- [Simon] Or sometime you get into the problem with cutting it too close to the mortise.

- [Julian] So it's a delicate balance.

- [Simon] Yes.

- Because you need that bevel, but too much and it starts weakening the support.

- Exactly.

- So these get run through this machine.

- Right.

- And then we get that bevel which creates that lip.

And then we're done, right?

Finished stretcher.

- Well, you still have to assemble it and do a lot of adjustment and sanding before we take it apart and send it to you.

(laughing) - [Julian] Oh, okay.

All right.

All right, so Simon, there is wood everywhere.

How many stretchers do you think you make a year?

- [Simon] Oh, I think I lost count.

- How many do you think you made in your lifetime?

- Oh, I don't know.

Thousands, hundreds of thousands.

- Hundreds of thousands?

Maybe millions?

- Maybe millions.

- Yeah, that's pretty remarkable.

Think about all those artworks all over the world.

- Right.

- In museums, in galleries, in homes that have your stretchers holding them together.

- Right.

- That's kind of a cool idea, right?

- Well, you know it's an honor.

I mean- - Yeah.

- Look, you know everything is custom-made here.

- Yeah.

- We don't make it ahead of the time and try to put it on a shelf and sell them.

- Yeah.

So it depends on the market as well.

And sometimes people have a large quantity order.

Sometimes they only want one stretcher.

- Yeah, so for me, getting one single stretcher and giving you a headache about the dimensions and the shape to maybe an artist ordering 50 or 60, you can do it.

- Oh, sure.

- No problem.

- No problem.

Yours not a headache.

Really.

(laughing) - Is that a challenge?

- Yeah, give me something even more complicated.

- All right.

Well, I'll figure something out.

- No problem.

- [Julian] So we're here at finishing and I have two questions for you.

One- - Okay.

- Why even bother with this?

It looks so labor intensive.

Why not just skip it like everybody else does?

It'd be faster, cheaper, easier.

And two, they're doing it by hand.

Why not power tools, you know automatic sanding?

Just again, make it faster and easier.

- Well, since this is like one-of-a-kind product, this is built specifically for a job for a conservator or for an artist.

So we would like to make sure that every joint engage nicely, nice and tight, and also everything is nice and flat.

So there's no steps.

- I see.

So, again, it's about precision and- - Precision and you want it to look nice.

Why not?

- No, I gotcha.

I appreciate it.

It makes a lot of sense to me.

So the last step is keys, right?

- [Simon] Yes.

- So these are the keys.

- Um-hmm.

- And the function of keys is to expand this joint and add tension onto the canvas so that it doesn't get slack.

- Right.

- [Julian] I've noticed that you put the keys in like this with this angle here.

- [Simon] Right.

- And I put the keys in like this with a 90 degree angle.

- [Simon] Right.

- And I do it this way because that's how my father taught me and if I didn't do it that way, he'd yell at me.

(Simon laughing) So which is the right way?

Because I gotta tell you, among conservators, keys and which way they go in is a never ending debate.

Some people say this is the right way.

Some people say this is the right way.

So settle it once and for all, today here with me.

Which is the right way?

But be careful because I'm a customer, you know.

- (laughing) Well, that's not right or wrong though.

- Really?

- Now, yes.

If you cut this off and make it into a parallel key.

- [Julian] Yep.

- [Simon] Right.

So if you like to take your hammer and hit it parallel to the edge.

- [Julian] Yep.

- [Simon] Or I call this it's an angle key.

- [Julian] Okay.

- [Simon] So when you strike, you strike it this way.

- Right.

- Right.

So we make all different shape of keys, even rounding.

- Wait, why rounded?

- Because you don't want the short parallel grain to break off when you strike it.

- [Julian] Okay, so if you hit it here, it might snap off.

- [Simon] Yes.

- And you had mentioned that sometimes people want different shaped keys.

- Um-hmm.

- Like they tell you, well, we want a cut here or a rounded here.

I mean, why?

- It's just different conservator and a different aesthetic or they wanna reproduce what was original in that stretcher- - Okay.

So, matching something historic.

- Um-hmm.

- Or like you said, just for aesthetics.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Julian] Which, for something so utilitarian as a stretcher support and a key, you'd think that aesthetics don't matter.

- Yeah, it matters.

(laughs) - It does.

- Yeah.

- Well, it does, right?

And I always tell people when I work on paintings, I take the same care on the back as I do on the front.

- [Simon] Right.

- Because it matters.

- Yes.

- And some people say, "Well, that's crazy.

It's a waste of time and money."

- Right.

- And then they see it and they say, "Oh, something as humble as the little key, it matters."

- Yeah.

- [Julian] All right, Simon, this looks like a vacuum press.

- Yes.

- Why do you have a vacuum press here?

What are you making?

- Well, here we are laminating a piece of canvas on the panel.

But normally we use it to laminate panel like this.

- So, this is not your traditional canvas on a stretcher, which is soft and has some spring.

- [Simon] Right.

- This is a rigid support for an artist who wants to paint on something hard.

- [Simon] Right.

- And you mentioned that these are what you're making.

- Right.

See, a lot of artists like to paint on a hard surface.

- [Julian] Yeah.

- And rather than having a canvas stretch over it or laminate onto it, they go directly on the wood.

- [Julian] So you're building these things, specifically, for artists.

- [Simon] Yes.

- And my guess is because you looked around and saw that there was nothing sufficient, nothing up to your standards and you felt that you could do better.

- [Simon] Um-hmm.

- You don't have to be modest about it.

That's what the whole place is about, right?

Seeing things that aren't good and doing better.

- Right.

Yeah, so the design of the strainer bar, I call this strainer bar.

Because of the L shape with the tongue and groove, so it's very stable.

And I also purchased these whole piece face veneer birch plywood.

They're custom made for us.

- So better material.

- Better material.

- Better design.

- Yes.

- Better products.

Better for the artists.

- Right.

- Never content, Simon is always experimenting and innovating with new materials like honeycomb panels, which are dimensionally stable or hybrid aluminum wood stretchers, which are lighter weight and stronger than traditional wood stretchers for extra large pieces of artwork.

Well, Simon, thanks for letting me take up your day and showing me around.

- I really appreciate your coming and showing how we do things.

You know the way that we think is the right way to do it.

- [Julian] Yeah.

Well, I think it's important to people.

- And here you go, this is your little- - Oh.

- Oval strainer that you ordered.

- Yeah, this is for a really special painting for a client.

- So yeah, it's four pieces of hardwood joined together.

And then after that, the hardest part is maybe doing a little slight bevel on this side.

- Oh, right.

Yeah, right.

Even a small little oval gets the Simon Liu treatment.

Well, thanks, Simon.

This is really wonderful.

And I look forward to using more of your products in the future.

- Thank you so much.

- There's a certain humility knowing that no matter how beautiful or precise one's work, it will always be upstaged by that which it supports.

But for Simon, that responsibility is precious and that's evident by the decades of experience, innovation and refinement that he's invested into his work, all in the service of the magic of art.

(dramatic bright music) (bright music fades)