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Re-framing a Sydney Yard Watercolor

Posted on November 2nd, 2011

A follow-up to the last entry, here’s a wonderful example of a watercolor by one of California’s premiere early watercolorists, Sydney Janis Yard (1855-1909). This is a frame we’ve used before, for other, similar California watercolors — by Percy Grey — but this job offers the re-framing aspect to the story.
Before

The “before” shot demonstrates the typical conventional contemporary framing approach for this type of piece. The silk mat and curly-cue gold frame seem intended for nothing but projecting an air of sophistication around the painting. The glaring white mat contrasts so much with the deep shadowy tones of the painting that it actually interferes with the eye’s ability to adjust to the light the artist captures so effectively. In so doing, it spoils the painting. The incongruous framing not only fails to serve the painting itself, but creates a harsh divide between the painting and its surroundings. The gold frame may not look too bad in the photo above, but is a production compo molding nailed together. One corner was already broken. The frame didn’t hold up to scrutiny — or to life (see detail below)!

Corner of old frame

What the painting needed instead was a dark frame, quiet and soft in profile, with just a halo of gold to highlight it on the wall while continuing and sustaining the spirit of the picture into the architectural realm.

After

Titled “Under the Oaks,” the painting’s rustic spirit — completely ignored by the previous framing —  and of course the oak trees Yard painted called unquestionably for an oak frame. (The protective aspect of the oak frame is another level of meaning for a depiction of oak trees sheltering a shepherd.) This is a simple 2-3/4″ wide scoop in our Century Series (No. 308.2) around a 3/4″ ogee liner oil gilded with 23 kt leaf. We stained the scoop a burnt umber (our Medieval Oak stain) matching the shadows — the frame being a shadow effect around the painting, to draw your eye to the lighter painting. Two fine reeds at the sight edge of the dark molding echo some of the fine details in the painting. A closer view of the frame:

No. 308.2 (“Michigan”) — 2-3/4″ with 3/4″ gilt oak ogee liner

Taking the time to craft the frame well with splined closed corners (finished after joining) and attention to finishing off every detail actually has an aesthetic effect, a sense of caring made tangible, not conveyed by digital photos.

The piece is framed archivally by using a hidden, or “gasket,” mat under the liner. It’s purpose is to separate the picture from the glazing (in this case u.v.-filtering acrylic). The rabbet is lined with a metal tape to isolate the acids in the wood from the watercolor paper.

Thank you to Montgomery Gallery, where this beautiful painting is available.

Framing Historic California Watercolors

Posted on October 12th, 2011

We’ve recently had the pleasure of framing several watercolors by notable California artists working in the early twentieth century.

Maynard Dixon (1875-1946):

Chris Jorgensen (1838-1876):

William S. Rice (1873-1963):

Marjorie Stevens (1902-1992; available through North Point Gallery):

Lorenzo Latimer (1857-1941; these available through North Point Gallery):

Davis Schwartz (1879-1969):

A Chamfered Mirror

Posted on September 7th, 2011

John Ruskin wrote, “to those who love Architecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything.”

One age-old kind of handwork is chamfering, and its application to frames is one of the greatest joys in my work.

This is a quartersawn white oak mirror I just made for a customer to give as a wedding gift. It measures 34″ x 22″, and features a carved initial “S” at the top and the year at the bottom.

Here’s the story, with pictures, of its making.

The customer really liked an earlier design shown here, so we adapted it.

The main difference is the top, where I added the carved initial medallion and adapted the chamfer at the sight edge to accommodate it.

Below are some shots of it being made.

Starting with a simple, flat mitered frame, I marked out the chamfer and carving pattern in pencil (above).

Next, the frame is clamped to the bench hanging over the edge to leave clearance for the spokeshave, shown below.

The sole of the spokeshave is convex.
 

Chamfering the sight edge.

I do as much as I can of the outside chamfer with the spokeshave, then finish the tighter radius of the ends with a skew chisel. You can also use a gouge and carve across the grain.

Above—here’s one side all chamfered.

The inside of the top is a little different. Here are shots of it being carved, mostly with a straight chisel:

Above is frame with all the chamfering done. Below, with the initial and the year carved.

Then it’s off to the finishing room for stain and varnish, before a lifetime of service in somebody’s home!

Real Wealth: Steve Jobs and Handcraft

Posted on August 27th, 2011

Steve Jobs and handcraft are not two things we naturally associate with each other. But they should be. Allow me to explain.


Big news in the business world this week is Jobs stepping down from Apple. One story about this that played on the radio caught my attention, as it echoed a point I tried to make in my post-financial collapse essay for Arts and Crafts Homes Magazine called “Real Wealth: The Value of Art and Craft In a Debased Economy,” which was that if manufacturing, along with agriculture, forms the foundation of our economy, then the bedrock of that foundation is handcraft. Jobs’s story provides a perfect example. Even as high up the economic ladder and the management scale as Jobs was, even as technologically sophisticated and abstract as his work is, there is a real basis for what he did in handcraft. Here’s how he himself explained it in his 2005 Stanford University commencement address:

Reed College at that time [when he attended in 1972] offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

It’s notable that what opened his eyes to handcraft wasn’t reading books or attending lectures about it, but the actual presence of it in the buildings that framed his education. As drenched in technology as college campuses and students are, it would be nice if this lesson were reviewed and all computer- and machine-generated signage were replaced with calligraphed and carved signs. After all, no less a technological visionary than Steve Jobs makes the case that such seemingly small matters comprise the bedrock of our technological advancement.

James McGrew

Posted on August 17th, 2011

We’re excited to be welcoming James McGrew to the Gallery.

A passionate explorer and painter of Yosemite National Park, James has spent a lifetime (well, his life so far) capturing the Park’s magnificent natural beauty. We’re featuring his plein air work, all fairly small (i.e., nicely affordable). While we’re still framing his paintings, you can see what we have pre-framed on his page on our site, here. (His own website is here.)

We’re also framing a beautiful piece, below, for James to enter in the American Impressionist Society‘s Annual Show in October in Carmel.

Great to have you aboard, James!

Framing a Pamela Glasscock Watercolor

Posted on August 9th, 2011

We just framed a set of three floral watercolors by northern California artist Pamela Glasscock. To marry the delicate images with a Craftsman interior, we couldn’t do better than our old standby, the Yoshida frame. Made in machiche, a tropical hardwood (sustainably harvested) from Belize, which we chose for its natural color which harmonizes perfectly with the paintings. The frame’s joined with tiny through mortise-and-tenon joints with raised square plugs at the corners.

One reason I wanted to show this here is because it contrasts with the heavier frames we use on the oil paintings I tend to blog about. Also, we haven’t framed close here, so it’s a chance to show we don’t always frame close. Instead, the paper, which has nice deckled edges, is floated. Floating can come off as pretentious—a way of separating the picture from the frame and surroundings. In other words, it often has a stand-offish effect. In this case, though, it simply treats the paper as a three-dimensional object. A watercolor of this delicacy is never going to be integrated architecturally—achieving what’s sometimes called “mural feeling.” So in this case, the separation effect of floating makes sense.

Pamela Glasscock is represented by Calabi Gallery, in Petaluma, CA and I. Wolk Galleries. A wonderful watercolorist!

Re-framing Hanson Puthuff

Posted on August 6th, 2011

The landscape paintings of Hanson Puthoff (1875-1972) made a major contribution to California’s rich heritage of landscape painting. Unfortunately, his pieces did not always find their way into frames that do them justice. Here’s one example we had the honor of re-framing this week, taking it out of a machine-made, gold painted compo setting and putting it in a handcrafted, carved quartersawn oak frame. Here it is before and after:

 A well-made, simple home. A 3″ bevel profile (canvas is 11-1/2″ x 15″) with a 45 degree carved chamfer sight edge. Close-ups:

Here’s a profile view of the frame:

Re-framing a New—and Much Larger—Rosa Bonheur

Posted on August 2nd, 2011

Last year we re-framed a couple of paintings of stags, both by premiere nineteenth century French wildlife painter Rosa Bonheur, which I blogged about here. We just did another one, and at 48″ x 36″ it’s considerably bigger than the first two. First, here it is in the compo exhibition frame that we were to replace:

And here it is now:

Given the log house setting it’s going in, our solution leans more to the rustic than it might have considering the highly formal (I generally use the term in reference to form, not sophistication and refinement) treatment of the subject matter. But having the frame come out of the same appreciation of the beauty of nature and handcraft that the painting does—especially in contrast to the original frame—more than makes up for whatever formal refinement we left out of the profile. (For a more formal profile on a similar painting, see the earlier entry on re-framing Bonheur stags, here.) I stand by it as a far more sympathetic setting than was the old frame, and far more successful at the primary job of a frame, which is to help us see the picture. Any rejection of pretentiousness and false luxury in art is a step in the right direction! Taking a picture from an exhibitionist presentation to one in harmony and sympathy with the picture is fulfilling one of my favorite William Morris phrases: “for beauty’s sake and not for show.”

This is a compound frame with a mortise-and-tenon flat, a carved cap-molding and carved and gilt liner. After that wonderful reward of the framer—the moment when you finish fitting the picture and turn over the completed piece to see it—Trevor and I were struck by how the highlights were enhanced. Is it the gilt liner, the darker frame, or the combination? Beyond that, I can’t add anything that I didn’t say in the previous Bonheur re-framing example.

Here’s a corner detail:

Trevor Davis gets credit for making it. Here’s the proud craftsman—giving you a sense of the scale of the piece, too.