There’s something about a cabin in the wilderness, a simple home completely at home in the natural landscape, making us part of the landscape ourselves—placing us in our true element, placing us in the great frame of creation.
Jim C. Norton (b. 1953), untitled (horses and log cabin), n.d. Oil on canvas, 15 x 30.
One of the images in my last post (included again here, at right) is such a cabin, itself a frame of walls well-joined (the joints fully articulated). And so in the same spirit we framed it, and gave the simple, well-made home it’s own simple, well-made home.
That one’s contemporary (by Jim C. Hall). Two others we’ve framed recently are older pieces. The first anonymous—which strikes me as suitable, given the vernacular subject matter (unknown architect; unknown painter). It’s in a simple carved slope, our No. 2 CV. The wood is quartersawn white oak in Saturated Medieval Oak stain, and the profile is 2-1/2″ wide. I like the way the carving echoes the dappled light and leaves—and paint—of the picture. The second is by a very notable California painter, Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848-1900). The stained quartersawn oak cassetta frame is 4″ wide.
Anonymous, untitled (cabin in the woods), no date. Oil on board, 11″ x 18″.
Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848-1900), “Charcoal Burner’s Cabin,” Cascades, OR, 1881. Oil on canvas, 16″ x 24″.
Detail of cassetta frame in carved quartersawn white oak.