Say how it is made.
The painting is AI-assisted, guided by an art direction we wrote for each of the fifteen editions. We print that fact in the footer of the site and on the card in the parcel. If a method needs hiding, it is the wrong method.
About the studio
A small studio withone strong opinion.
Houses hold more of a family’s story than any other object they will ever own. We paint them so the story has somewhere to hang.
See how we work ↗Why houses
Every family hasan address in its story.
The house you grew up behind. The first flat with the terrifying mortgage. The one that sold last spring and still gets driven past slowly. People keep photographs of people, but the places usually survive only by accident, in the corner of other pictures.
HELD exists to make the place the subject for once: one photograph, painted into a piece worth framing, checked against the real building, and made to last as long as the story does.
How we hold ourselves to it
Four rules,kept in public.
A person holds the gate.
Every finished portrait is measured against the customer’s photograph, and every paid order is looked at by a person before it is released to print. Speed is technology’s job; judgement stays human.
Nothing owed before the proof.
The preview is free, private and finished before any payment. We would rather show the work than describe it, and the whole shop is built around that order of events.
Materials that outlast us.
Cotton rag paper, pigment inks rated for a century of colour, solid wood frames, UK printing and framing. A portrait of a family’s house should be buildable into a will.
The plain facts
On the record,checkable.
The studio
HELD is the house portrait studio of CSS International Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 16110027.
Where things happen
The studio is run from London. Printing and framing happen in the United Kingdom, and UK delivery is included on every piece.
What we make
Personalised house portraits from customers’ own photographs, in fifteen fixed editions across three collections, finished as framed pieces, deep box frames, fine art paper, canvas, acrylic or digital files.
Who to talk to
A person reads everything sent to the studio inbox. Write to studio@heldportraits.co.uk about orders, photographs, gifts or anything else.
Writing about the studio? The press page has the short version, the facts and a way to try the product in ten minutes.
Keep exploring
How it worksFrom the photograph on your phone to a checked, framed piece: every step, shown.→Paper, frames and inksHahnemühle cotton paper, UK framing, and colour rated to outlive us all.→Personalised house portraitsWhat makes a house portrait personal, and how yours gets that way.→Questions, answered plainlyPhotos, timings, remakes, returns: the honest answers, in one place.→
The best introduction is the product