Elgin shop owner forced to close Finecraft Picture Framing due to ill health
A business owner has made the “heartbreaking” decision to close her shop, opened in honour of her father, due to ill health.
Jenny Smith, who ran Finecraft Picture Framing in Elgin for seven and a half years, was hospitalised in November and was diagnosed with vasculitis.
During her recovery, Jenny suffered a stroke. She has lost use of her hands and feet - rendering her unable to perform her craft.
Finecraft continued running for several more months, but Jenny was forced to make the “devastating” closure call in June after her assistant Gill - who she described as a “Godsend” - left the business.
The 59-year-old said: “I loved the job so much that I couldn't have imagined giving it up. This is the only way I would have stopped. It was devastating making the decision.
“I tried to think of every scenario to avoid closure. It was a really heartbreaking decision.
“I have no feeling in my hands so I could chop a finger off and not know! It wasn’t sensible to continue.
“I couldn’t hold things properly for the finer details and that would annoy and upset me. That’s what made me decide to stop.”
Jenny started Finecraft after buying the shop from Decora, where she used to work. It opened its doors on October 1, 2017.
It was her father’s craft that persuaded Jenny to start the business. James Heron worked as a framer in Ayrshire for 25 years.
That made Jenny’s decision to close all the harder. However, she has had an outpouring of love since making the call.
She added: “I have had a lot of messages and that’s the hardest part to take. People have been saying how sorry they are that we are going.
“I will miss seeing the satisfaction of customers. Every week was a different challenge and a new job.
“I had a lady come in and lay down a picture and say ‘this is of my husband, I don’t like it’. I sorted the framing and she quite liked it.
“Once I had finished it I put it next to the till so it was the first thing customers saw when they come in. She gasped when she saw it. She loved it. She said ‘it’s my favourite picture’.”
Jenny regularly framed royal invitations for Moray’s Lord Lieutenant Seymour Monro and were regularly framing pictures related to RAF Lossiemouth.
She also remembered a gentleman coming in with a piece of wood from the ship Discovery - which was so huge that special glass had to be cut for the frame.
Jenny, who has also been forced to give up the flat above the shop that she lived in, expressed her thanks to Gill, who helped keep the shop open while she was in hospital.
“She was a godsend,” Amy, Jenny’s daughter, said. “She was doing really, really well at helping and we are so grateful to her, but it became harder to sustain.
“What she did for us was incredible and when she left there wasn't an option but to shut. There was nothing we could do to save it.”
Finecraft was well-recognised for its colourful exterior - with a number of window flower boxes outside the shop.
Such was her passion for the flowers, Jenny planned to grow all the flowers for Amy’s wedding in April. This wasn’t possible due to her health, but she did manage to attend the wedding after getting a lift to Perthshire from Aberdeen in a private ambulance.
Having now been out of hospital for 11 days, Jenny will spend time with family - staying with Amy in Kennethmont - as she focuses on her recovery.
