A Frame-Maker’s Journal
Updates and reflections 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
The Lasting Frame
“When we build, let us think that we build forever,” wrote Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture. We make in enduring form—stone, strong timbers, iron, and all durable materials—things we believe will endure in use and meaning. When we build for last... continue reading.
The Wooden Frame of Reverence
We recently framed this great painting by the 19th century British landscape painter Benjamin Williams Leader, which demonstrates the artist’s deeply felt reverence for the great frame of life that John Ruskin, the foremost pastor of the arts in Britain in Leader&... continue reading.
James McGrew Featured in Southwest Art Magazine
James McGrew, one of the artists we represent, is featured in the current issue of Southwest Art Magazine and being deservedly touted as an emerging artist. I love how he frames his objective as a painter: “I want the viewer to feel a sense of awe and wonder that help... continue reading.
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.