Just Launched!!!

Three and a half years ago I started tinkering with WordPress to see if I could build myself an online catalog. A year or so later, Matt Jalbert, to whom I’ll forever be grateful for dragging Holton Studio into the digital age with the website we launched in 2010, gave up freelance web design. So I went out to find a new designer, and quickly landed on Computer Courage in Berkeley, which had going for it—in addition to clear business integrity—the fact that they build sites using WordPress, and could therefore simply integrate the catalog I’d been building into a new site. Of course, the possibilities of an entire site built such that I could manage all the content myself were intoxicating, and hence the over-long process of getting this thing up and running—and the long dormant phase for our online presence.

But the dormancy’s over, the new site’s finally done and ready for prime time, and so here you go—the all new and improved HoltonFrames.com!!!

What are the highlights?

• A wider format, much bigger images, and WAY more pages. You’ll get click-happy drilling down through pages (especially in the Frame Catalog) and enlarging pictures!
• A Frame-Maker’s Catalog — truly a virtual showroom of the vast majority of our frame designs, well organized and easy to browse. Should be a great tool for our many mail order customers.
• The Portfolio — GREATLY expanded brag book and framing design idea book featuring not only frames we’re particularly proud of but wonderful pictures by great artists like Benjamin Williams Leader, Peder Monsted, Albert Bierstadt, William Keith, Joseph H. Sharp, Arnold Friberg, Gustav Baumann, Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, Carl Sammons, Thaddeus Welch, Grace Carpenter Hudson, James Audubon, George Catlin, Hiroshi Yoshida, A.D.M. Cooper, Alfred DeBreanski, Rosa Bonheur… and many more! Just because the website was dormant doesn’t mean the Studio was. We’ve done some of our best work in these last couple of years since I’d updated the portfolio.
• A fully updated Gallery. Our showroom display of northern California landscape painting was very inadequately represented on the old site.
• Specialty Mirrors — since the beginning, these are some of the best work I’ve done, involving hand carving. The old site barely mentioned these designs and didn’t do justice to their fine details. The new site features a couple dozen in big, clear pictures.
• The Blog (where you are now) is integrated into the site itself instead of being over at Blogger.
• An easily accessible contact form in the left column where you can conveniently reach us right away with any questions or comments. Especially with the site being brand new, I eagerly solicit your feedback!

Meanwhile, the shop’s going strong and the showroom’s packed more than ever with beautiful paintings and picture frames, so we’re not only virtually enhanced—we’re as real as ever! After you check us out online, come on down during the holidays—I’d love to see you!