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
Paul Kratter Places First at Borrego Springs Invitational
Congratulations to Paul Kratter whose painting “Desert Blues,” displaying the artist’s formidable talent in capturing atmosphere, earned him first place at the Borrego Springs Plein Air Invitational this past weekend. Fantastic, Paul! Congratulations! ... continue reading.
William James and the Hand Crafted Frame of Youth
“It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals,” according to the ancient Greek Anaxagoras. It follows that handcraft is indispensable to the education of our children—and that in a debased society education should lose its basis in han... continue reading.
Mahogany on Mahogany: Framing James Hamilton
The earliest independent paintings were made on solid wooden panels with the edges of the panels raised to frame the image. Frame and painted panel were one. Today such thoroughly unified presentations are rare among painters, but the ideal of harmony remains exemplary,... continue reading.
William Morris, Frame-Maker (for a Valentine)
“I was the master-mason of a church that was built more than six hundred years ago,” begins William Morris’s “Story of the Unknown Church”, his best piece of fiction from his Oxford years. Morris believed passionately in the continuity of h... continue reading.
The Frame of Natural Affection: Framing Alexander Max Koester (1864-1932)
We just finished framing this exceptional and exemplary work by Alexander Max Koester, a leading Impressionist painter of the Munich school around the turn of the last century. “Ducks In a Pond,” (no date), oil on canvas, 31″ x 52″ is a beautiful... continue reading.
How Anders Zorn Framed Art
The work of Anders Zorn (Sweden, 1860–1920) is a great example of the concern artists of his day had for sustaining the unity of all the arts. He was among the many painters who insisted—even as they pursued painting for its advantageous status in the commercial ma... continue reading.
Framing Thomas Hill—and the Enduring Human Spirit
We finished 2013 with a real flourish, completing the framing of this large (36″ x 60″) painting, “Figures on a Horse-Drawn Sledge with Fishers on a River” (no date) by Thomas Hill (1829-1908), one of California’s greatest early landscape ... continue reading.
Framing Peder Monsted
I’m very behind on blogging on some of the great jobs we’ve done over the past months. Here’s a spectacular winter scene—the Peder Monsted I showed the frame for on my Jan. 2 post and promised then to write about soon. Monsted was a Danish painter, b... continue reading.
Our Gallery Artists Exhibiting at California Art Club Annual Show
A number of The Gallery’s artists have been accepted to the California Art Club’s 103rd Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition to be held March 30 – April 20, 2014 at The Autry in Los Angeles. Below are the works accepted from Christin Coy, Mark Farina, Paul... continue reading.