Our new show, simply titled “California Wildflowers,” opens today! After a refreshingly wet winter, California enjoyed a lush and brilliant spring. In this show, eighteen painters celebrate that revitalizing season and its blossoms.

Below is one of the thirty-five paintings, “California Superbloom,” an 18″ x 24″ oil on canvas by guest artist Inga Poslitur (right). It’s framed in a quartersawn white oak (Medieval Oak stain) No. 1—3-1/2″ with proud splines pinned with six dowels at each corner.

You’ll have a chance to enjoy much more of Inga’s work later this summer, when we host “Inga Poslitur: New Paintings,” August 10 – September 14.

Today’s opening reception for “California Wildflowers” is from 2 to 4. I hope you’ll come! You can also view the entire show online here and here.

—Tim Holton

In our latest exhibit, “California Wildflowers,” which opens this weekend, eighteen painters celebrate our beautiful state at its most beautiful—in bloom! Erik Tiemens is represented by this stunner, “Reaching the Top” (oil on canvas, 18″ x 24″), painted this spring (of course) at China Camp State Park in Marin County. With Erik’s masterful handling of the light, a path invites us to wander a green hillside dotted with poppies, toward a vista on San Pablo Bay. The 3″ flat mitered frame is in fumed quartersawn white oak with a narrow parcel gilt sight edge chamfer.

The opening reception for the artists is this Saturday from 2 to 4. I hope to see you there. Also we will be posting the show online here and on our online store. “California Wildflowers” runs through August 3.

—Tim Holton

Erik Tiemens, “Reaching the Top,” 2024. Oil on canvas, 18″ x 24″.

This frame design came to me one day a year or two ago while noodling in my sketchbook, and I made a corner sample of it. Shortly after, it came in handy for this 19th century oban size print, “Illusion”, at right, by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865). I liked the way it repeated the lines in the kimonos. It’s a plain 5/8″ wide square profile in walnut stained black, but with shaped corners. A red painted slip accented the shape, and further harmonized the print and frame.

That same corner sample recently proved useful for a much later and very different Japanese print, shown below. Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) and his son Toshi Yoshida (1911-1995) are among the great 20th century Japanese woodblock artists. Toshi generally followed in his father’s footsteps, favoring naturalistic images of landscapes and animals (like this great example). But a couple of years after Hiroshi’s death in 1950, Toshi experimented with abstraction, distilling his imagery down to basic elements like—as in this case—line and form. He made this print, “Dragon A,” in 1955. We gave the 11″ x 19-1/2″ image an ample 3″ mat (3-1/2″ bottom), and finished the setting with the flaired corner design, 1″ wide, also walnut stained black, but this time left on its own, without the slip, and so more suitably bold.

This month’s Picture Framing Magazine again features our work. The 17th century map by Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu, which I posted about here, was recognized as the Design of the Month. Since our first Design of the Month three years ago, we’ve been chosen five times for the trade journal’s regular feature!

The magazine seems to especially like what we do with antique Dutch maps. In March, our framing of a map by Joan Blaeu’s father Willem Blaeu was featured (and also made the cover of the issue); and in June 2021, PFM picked this handling of a map of the Americas. But on a very different note, for last December’s issue, they chose our framing of a large color photograph by Stephen Goldblatt. And in April 2023, the magazine recognized our setting for a painting on paper, “Jormungandr” by Milivoj Ćeran.

PFM also published an excellent profile of Holton Studio in its March 2021 issue, available here.

My last post was about framing a set of three identical American Arts and Crafts tiles dating from about 1908, and made by AE Baggs of Marblehead Pottery. This is a set of six tiles, each one 6″ x 6″, by one of the great English Arts and Crafts ceramicists, William De Morgan (1839-1917). The outside dimensions of the mortise and tenon frame are 9″ x 42″. The members are 1-1/2″ wide on the top and bottom, with 3″ sides. The frame’s made in stained quartersawn white oak.

Like the Baggs frame, Trevor and I collaborated on this one. He built it and I carved it. The carving carries out the repeat pattern. That’s my design at right. I let the tip of the leaf on the left side poke out beyond the edge of the frame.

Evelyn & William De Morgan

De Morgan was married to the wonderful Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan, and was a close friend and collaborator of William Morris’s, designing tiles as well as stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. It was a circle steeped in and devoted to the notion that architecture was the mother of all the arts, and the product of the cooperation of those arts. As with the Marblehead set, this framing was executed in that spirit.

It’s destined to hang in a suitably significant architectural location: over my customer’s fireplace in her beautiful Arts and Crafts home.

This is a set of carved matte green triptych tiles made around 1908 by Arthur Baggs (1886-1947) a few years after he founded the Marblehead Pottery. Each tile is 6-1/4″ square. We made the frame in quartersawn white oak (a natural choice for this image of oak trees) with Saturated Medieval Oak stain. Outside dimensions are about 8″ x 26″. Trevor and I collaborated on the setting for Mr. Baggs’s work. Trevor built the mortise and tenon frame, I carved the two dividers to connect and harmonize with the carved tiles.

When we frame pictures, we’re giving them architectural place. Although paintings were originally part of architecture—the first paintings were murals and frescoes—we tend to forget that old connection. Tiles, however, we continue to recognize as part of architecture, and a tile maker like Arthur Baggs as a member of one of the many trades taking part in building. So whenever I frame tiles I’m very conscious of that old collaborative understanding of architecture: the work of diverse trades, each one distinct but alive to and with regard for the others, all joined in the larger work of art that is a building.

This is that idea in microcosm.

It’s always lovely to watch a show come together. But this one we’re enjoying seeing bloom before our eyes. “California Wildflowers” opens June 29, and its wonderful. My daughter Ella gets credit for the idea. (Good call, Ella.) The group show includes eighteen painters.

Here’s the Tia Kratter still life watercolor painting we’re using for the publicity, including the postcard. (If you’re on our mailing list, you should get the card next week. If you want to be on our list, shoot us an email.) “Vic’s Picks” is 10″ x 12″ (13-1/2″ x 15-1/2″ outside frame dimensions). We set it in a 2″ walnut cove profile with a gilt cove sight edge—the gold is 18 kt pale—and cushion back edge with a simple carved accent near the corners.

Flowers are always fun to frame because of the opportunity for harmony found in the similarity of form between the frame and a flower—how a frame radiates out from the picture like the petals of a flower.

With all the rain we had last winter,  this spring brought a riot of life and color. Our painters have reveled in it all, and responded with a great variety of joyful still lifes and landscapes.

Please come join us for the opening reception, Saturday, June 29 from 2 to 4. The show runs through August 3.

The show will also be online here.

To celebrate 15 years of showing Terry Miura, the Gallery is currently featuring the artist’s paintings. A popular teacher and greatly admired by the region’s landscape painters, Terry’s earned the lofty status of an artist’s artist. He’s always been a big fan our frames and supporter of our work—and we appreciate it!

Come enjoy the exhibit, showing through June 8. View Terry’s work on his page…

Our friend Karima Cammell, whose show “High Water” we hosted here in 2021, was chosen from thousands of entrants for a solo show at Brea Gallery in Brea (Orange County), California. We had the great honor of framing most of Karima’s work for for the exhibit. Titled, “The Light Gets In,” the show runs through June 23.

Among the works we framed is “DCM Triptych,” below. We set Karima’s painted and gilded panels in walnut mortise and tenon frames hinged together. The frames were carved, stippled, and gilded to extend the artist’s design. View all the other works in the show on Brea Gallery’s webpage, here.

“A(r)mour,” self-portrait by Karima Cammell

The blurb for the show explains that

In her artistic practice, Karima employs traditional media such as egg tempera, oil paint, gilding, and glass, viewing herself as much as a creator of objects as an image maker. Her artistic approach reflects a devotional attitude, prioritizing candor, craftsmanship, and reverence for the inherited legacy passed down from her mentors and forebears.

In that wide embrace of the arts and crafts and a Morrissian reverence for life lies the reason, I believe, for the studio’s affinity for her approach, and why Karima’s always a dream for us to work with. 

Visit the webpage for Karima’s show “The Light Gets In” at Brea Gallery…

View “High Water,” Karima’s 2021 show at the Holton Studio Gallery…