A Frame-Maker’s Journal
Updates and ruminations on our work and mission to revive the art and craft of framing pictures. Here I'll show you new jobs we're especially proud of and keep you up on what's going on at the Gallery, as well as discuss topics germane to our work, including handcraft and work generally, the place of art, and ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement (especially its greatest leaders, John Ruskin and William Morris).
I hope you’ll subscribe (see the form in the left column) or at least check back often. And I welcome your comments!
—Tim Holton
Framing Photography—and the Pictorial Revolution
In preparation for tonight’s event with portrait photographer Nan Phelps, I’m thinking more deeply than usual about portrait photography and how it’s framed. As I touched on in my last post, the essential problem of framing black and white portrait photography can be attributed to the very nature of the medium and its origins: unlike […]
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Framing Nan Phelps and Black and White Portrait Photographs
We’ve just hung a new show on the same idea of recent exhibits at the gallery, which have each featured a particular pictorial medium and emphasized our approach to framing it. Having covered antique Japanese prints, watercolors, and historical California painting... continue reading.
Framing a Lucia Mathews Watercolor
Here’s a pretty special recent job: a watercolor by Lucia Kleinhans Mathews, “Portrait of a Young Girl Seated in a Meadow,” from about 1914. Measuring 14″ x 11, the painting is characteristic of Lucia and her husband Arthur Mathews’s distinctly har... continue reading.
Framing Herman Herzog
We’ve decided to extend our show, Historical California Paintings. Originally scheduled to close tomorrow, August 31, we’ll keep it up for another week (through Saturday, September 7). If you haven’t seen the show yet, it’s a great opportunity to... continue reading.
Re-framing Bill Bender
Two paintings by the notable California landscape and genre painter Bill Bender (1919-2016) recently came to us from a collector with a deep love of California’s deserts, and thus a great appreciation for this particular painter’s affinity for the desert lan... continue reading.
Framing Three RTK Studio Tiles
RTK Studio, of Ojai, California, makes beautiful tiles, and it was a pleasure to frame these three critters. Each tile is 6″ x 6″, with frames all 2″ wide and made in stained quartersawn white oak. The three hang in the same room, so we wanted the fram... continue reading.
Framing Thomas Hill and Historical California Paintings: An Exhibit and New Webpage
We’ve spent many years developing and establishing our expertise in framing early California paintings. Now we’re pleased to announce our first exhibit of such work. “Historical California Paintings and How to Frame Them” will open next Saturday,... continue reading.
Framing a Maynard Dixon Sketch
Here’s a 1901 sketch by the famed Western painter Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), titled “Three Bucking Broncos”. We framed it in walnut with a black wash, in a simple profile with restrained but carefully sympathetic corner carving pattern to honor it. (Th... continue reading.
Introducing Oxford Frames
For many years we’ve offered a simple lap-joined frame we call the Adirondack. Now we’re expanding on that design with more decorative variations we’re calling “Oxford Frames”—the traditional name for the frame of this general type first ... continue reading.