There was a sort of frame-by-frame inevitability about the course life has taken for Alan Knight.

What began as a Saturday job as a framer in Grape Lane, York, for a teenage Alan ended 20 years later as his own show.

And now his company, York Rose Framing, which also sells antique maps and prints, is rapidly expanding to the point where he feels it is worthy enough to enter for the 1998 Evening Press Business Venture of the Year.

Judges of the competition, which is sponsored by Barclays Bank and the North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council, are bound to be impressed by the fact that Alan's turnover expanded last year by 19 per cent.

That was partly because he began to use the Stonegate Antique Centre as an outlet for the sale of antique maps and prints and partly because of a sudden increase in demand for his prints "perhaps fuelled by an upturn in the housing market," he suggests.

Ever since he got a weekend job with Vic Morte, a friend of his auntie's who owned the framing shop in Grape Lane as well as a pottery shop in Minster Gate, York, he was hooked on framing.

He perfected his craft while studying for his building diploma at York Technical College. "Then I realised that building wasn't for me. Framing was. And when I was offered a job there full time I took it."

Alan recalls: "He sold it on to Robert Park and after four years I bought the framing side from him Now I am buying a house in the Malton Road, York which has an old stable block I can convert into workshops which will run in tandem with the one I have here in Grape Lane.

"If I win the £2,000 first prize I'll plough the cash straight into that venture."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.