Here’s a key lesson I learned a long time ago when I started looking closely at early twentieth century oak frames: while the shape of a frame molding should be alive to the picture, subtlety is crucial to keeping the frame in its subordinate role. Following the example of the best Arts and Crafts era frame designers, we therefore typically flatten frame forms and elements a bit in deference to the flat plane of the picture and the flat wall the frame connects the picture to.

A good example of such a molding shape is a new profile we call No. 300 BC Low, which we just had knives made for. (These fit a molding head we use on a table saw.) The idea is to make the flattest perceptible concave molding shape. I’d call this a “dish” in contrast to a more pronounced scoop or cove. Of course the shape of the profile should always at the same time echo shapes rendered in the picture. But the subtlety adds another benefit having to do with harmony: it is by virtue of its contrast to the complementary adjacent flat picture and wall that the shape reads. If it were more dramatic, it wouldn’t need the juxtaposition to a contrasting flat plane for our eyes to register its character. Its interest, in other words, isn’t in the frame alone, but in its interdependent relationship with those flat forms. Flatness and 3-dimensional form complement—that is, they complete—each other. They need each other.

Just that slight curve, along with the cut-in back, gives the profile grace and makes it feel much lighter than a plain square molding, like the No. 1, at the same width.

We made the No. 300 BC Low corner sample below in fumed quartersawn white oak finished with linseed oil and wax. The knives are 2″ wide, and that’s the width of this sample, but they can also be used to mill a narrower molding or as part of a wider profile, either by adding other elements or simply stretching out the flat. In the photo at left, showing the knives on a page of my sketchbook, you can see how I’ve begun drawing possible profiles using these knives, often combined with other knives.

Tia Kratter‘s “Rebirth” (below), which is in our current show “California Wildflowers,” cried out for just such a profile, so it received our first frame made with the new knives. The shape suits not only the broad flat field but also the distinctive long gentle curves of poppy pedals.

We made Tia’s frame, above, in walnut. As I said, because the cove goes to flat, that portion can be stretched out to make profiles wider than 2″—which is what we did for the fumed quartersawn white oak frame on the 1912 Carl Schmidt Rookwood tile, below. This piece offered the perfect opportunity to echo the forms of the boat and the windmill while staying subordinate to Schmidt’s quiet and muted treatment of the scene.

Those wonderful old frames inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement came out of a special understanding of the natural unity and harmony of the arts, and in particular between pictures and architecture. Nineteenth century frames had become absurdly ostentatious and pretentious, reflecting an increasingly arrogant position and status for painting as separate from the other arts. Reformers turned to a humbler presentation of pictures, and relied on simpler frames, frequently made in beautiful oak, to restore pictures to a more harmonious role as just one of the many allied arts—no one of those arts standing alone but each made more beautiful by its complementary relations to the others and its service to the whole architectural setting.

—Tim Holton

Avi Shorer using a scraper on the face of our new No. 300 BC Low corner sample.

We had a great opening last Saturday for our latest show, “California Wildflowers.” Many of our artists were able to come, including Paul Roehl. Paul has this lovely 16″ x 20″ oil on panel in the exhibit, “Spring, Coast Range”. The frame, made in fumed quartersawn white oak finished with linseed oil and wax, is a 2-1/2″ wide flat with a soft carved cushion-shaped sight edge that rolls down to the painting and echoes its soft forms and textures. 18kt gilt slip.

Available here…

“California Wildflowers” is showing through August 3. Please come by to enjoy it—and consider making the beauty of California’s flowering spring landscape a part of your home year-round! The show can also be viewed online, here and here.

—Tim Holton

Paul Roehl, “Spring, Coast Range”. Oil on canvas panel, 16″ x 20″. $4,200 framed.
BUY

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.