Designed Around the Spirit of Tennis

How materials, craftsmanship, and years of refinement shaped the design philosophy behind Tennis Frame.

Tennis has always been about more than what happens between the lines. There is a certain elegance to the sport—the geometry of the court, the rhythm of movement, the quiet before a serve, and the marks left on a racket after years of play.

For many of us, a racket carries memories far beyond the matches themselves. It may remind us of our first lessons, long summer evenings, college tennis, a favorite court, an important victory, or simply a period of life spent loving the game. At Tennis Frame, our design philosophy began with a simple belief:

The spirit of tennis should not disappear when we leave the court.

We wanted to bring that feeling into everyday life—not through a traditional trophy case or piece of sports memorabilia, but through something that could live naturally within a home. Something architectural. Something understated. Something elegant enough to become part of the space around it, while preserving the story carried by the racket inside.

That idea became Tennis Frame.

Turning a Racket Into Something Worth Displaying

A meaningful tennis racket is rarely perfect.

The grip may be worn. The bumper may be scratched. Paint may have faded around the edges. There may be tape, clay dust, chips, or marks from hundreds of hours on court. To us, those imperfections are exactly what make a racket worth preserving. We never wanted to make an old racket look new again.

We wanted to create a setting where its history could remain visible. That led us to think about a racket almost as we would think about a piece of art—surrounded by materials and proportions that feel intentional, while allowing the racket itself to remain the center of attention. Turning that idea into a physical product, however, proved much more complicated than we initially expected.

Why We Chose Wood Over Aluminum

During the early development of Tennis Frame, we experimented with aluminum framing. There were clear advantages.

Aluminum can create an extremely narrow profile, allowing the border around the artwork to almost disappear. From a purely visual perspective, that minimalism was attractive. But once we began handling physical prototypes, we noticed problems that could not be understood from a rendering alone. The cut edges could feel sharp in the hand, particularly around the joined sections. More importantly, the finished structure did not have the sense of solidity we wanted for an object designed to hold something personally meaningful.

It felt lighter and more industrial than we believed Tennis Frame should feel. So we began experimenting with wood.

Wood immediately brought warmth and substance to the design. It felt more natural within a home and gave the frame the physical presence we had been looking for. But moving to wood introduced an entirely new challenge.

The Challenge of Making a Wooden Frame Feel Light

Wooden frames cannot simply be made as narrow as aluminum ones.

The four sides of a wooden frame need enough material at each corner to create strong, reliable connections. Reduce that width too far, and the construction becomes considerably more difficult and less stable.

This created one of the fundamental challenges in developing Tennis Frame:

How do we create the visual lightness of a modern frame without sacrificing the strength of a wooden structure?

We spent considerable time refining the proportions. Too wide, and the frame begins to visually overpower the racket. Too narrow, and the construction becomes less dependable. The final design reflects a balance between those two priorities.

The frame should have enough presence to feel substantial, but remain quiet enough that the racket and court remain the focus. That balance continues to influence the way we approach every Tennis Frame design.

Why We Moved Away From Acrylic

The transparent front panel went through a similar development process. Acrylic initially seemed like an obvious solution.

It is lightweight, easier to manufacture, easier to transport, and far less fragile during shipping. On paper, it made sense.

Living with the prototypes told us something different.

We found that acrylic scratched much more easily than we wanted. Normal handling and cleaning could gradually leave marks across a surface that was supposed to remain almost invisible.

More importantly, we began noticing visual distortion.

Reflections across acrylic could appear uneven or warped. Straight lines behind the panel could look slightly distorted, while the racket and court artwork could lose some of their clarity. For a product built entirely around presentation, that mattered.

We eventually chose tempered glass instead. Glass is heavier. It is more difficult to manufacture. It is more complicated and expensive to package and ship safely. From a production perspective, acrylic would have been the easier choice.

But when standing in front of the finished frame, we believe the difference matters.

The transparency feels cleaner. Reflections appear more natural. The strings of the racket, small scratches in the paint, court lines, and subtle surface textures remain visually crisp. Sometimes better design comes from choosing the more difficult solution.

Designing the Installation Experience

Our design process did not stop with the parts visible once the frame reached the wall. One question kept coming back to us:

What happens before the frame is hanging?

A beautiful object can quickly become frustrating if installation requires repeated measuring, marking, leveling, and adjustment. We wanted the installation process to feel considered as well.

One of our early solutions was a positioning paper designed specifically around the width of the frame. The mounting locations were pre-measured on the guide, and we integrated a small spirit level directly into the center. Instead of measuring the distance between mounting points manually, customers could place the paper against the wall, use the built-in level to straighten it, mark the correct positions, and install the frame.

It was a small detail, but it represented something important about the way we think about product design. The experience of an object begins long before someone steps back and looks at the finished result.

Opening the package matters. Understanding the components matters. Installing it matters. The small moments of friction matter. We continue to refine these details because good design is rarely one dramatic idea.

More often, it is dozens of small frustrations gradually removed.

The Court Is Part of the Memory

The court artwork behind every Tennis Frame follows the same philosophy. A tennis court is an unusually emotional place.

The warm red of clay.

The deep green of grass.

The blue of a hard court beneath stadium lights.

For someone who loves tennis, these are more than colors. They can immediately bring back a city, a season, a tournament, a match, or even one particular afternoon on court. That is why we do not see the court background simply as decoration behind the racket.

It creates the environment around the memory. We spend considerable time refining court proportions, textures, line weights, typography, surface details, and color because our goal is not simply to draw a tennis court.

We want to capture something about how being there feels. And sometimes creating that feeling means moving away from visual perfection. A real clay court is not a perfectly uniform field of red. Grass changes as it is played on. Hard courts develop subtle variations through weather, light, and years of use. These imperfections create character.

The same is true of the racket displayed above them.

Quiet Objects, Personal Stories

We have always been drawn to objects that do not need to explain themselves immediately.

From across a room, a Tennis Frame should feel simple.

Wood.

Glass.

Geometry.

Color.

Only when someone comes closer should more of the story begin to reveal itself.

The worn grip.

The scratches around the racket head.

The faded paint.

A court name.

A year.

Perhaps it is the racket someone competed with throughout college.

Perhaps it was their first serious racket.

Perhaps it belonged to a parent.

Perhaps it represents a championship, a coach, a doubles partner, or simply thousands of ordinary afternoons spent playing the sport they love.

That transformation—from sporting equipment into something deeply personal—is what interests us most.

Bringing the Elegance of Tennis Into Everyday Life

Tennis carries an unusual combination of qualities. Intensity and elegance. Tradition and constant evolution. Individual competition and lifelong community. Precision and imperfection. We wanted Tennis Frame to reflect that same balance.

Not a trophy case.

Not simply racket storage.

And not decoration without a connection to the game. Instead, our aspiration is to create something that allows tennis to become part of the spaces where we live. Because when the playing days of a racket are over, its story does not have to end in the back of a closet.

It can become a reminder.

Of matches played.

Of courts traveled to.

Of friendships made through the game.

Of victories and difficult losses.

Of a younger version of ourselves.

Or simply of why we picked up a racket in the first place.

This is the idea behind Tennis Frame:

To preserve the stories carried by our rackets, and to bring the elegance, character, and spirit of tennis into everyday life.