The joy in framing Japanese woodblock prints, one of our specialties, is in exploring the natural harmony that’s possible between the print and the frame. These prints frequently depict traditional Japanese life, including vernacular architectural and craft traditions. Because the art of the frame itself is an architectural craft tradition, these features are a natural basis for harmonious frames.

A good example is what I’m sharing today—our framing of a woodblock by shin hanga master Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), one of our favorite Japanese artists (after whom we named the Yoshida frame). This print, titled after the village it depicts, “Funatsu,” is from Yoshida’s series “Ten Views of Mount Fuji.” The image is oban size—about 15″ x 10″—and is dated 1928. The mortise and tenon frame has 3/4″-wide sides and 15/16″-wide top and bottom members.

The protruding tenons and horns are shaped to echo the crest of the roof of the building at the center of the print—my response to the traditional village architecture. I also admired the way the structures are defined by a lovely use of subtly complementary cool grey-black and warm brown lines. So I echoed that with similarly contrasting finishes for the walnut frame and the 1/8″-wide walnut slip: linseed oil wax with a black tint for the frame, and a clear oil finish for the slip.

For the same customer, we also framed Hiroshi Yoshida’s “In a Temple Yard”—another shin hanga depiction of traditional Japanese life. Dated 1935, it too is oban size. This frame, which is also walnut with black linseed oil wax, is what we call the Flaired Yoshida. Its lines relate to both the architecture of the bell tower and the form of the cherry tree. Like the “Funatsu” frame, this one has a contrasting slip, but here the slip is painted in the dark blue-green the artist used for the trees and water—an enhancement and complement to the pink of the blossoming cherry tree and orange and red kimonos of the figures.

Both frames were made by Trevor Davis. Craftsmanship means doing things well and with care. The design of such frames, important as it is, only goes so far. Just as the beauty of these prints depends not only on their imagery but to a great degree on the skill and care with which they’re executed, the frame’s beauty depends on sensitive design but, just as much, on the integrity the frame maker brings to the task. As always, Trevor’s frames convey the craftsman’s care and integrity.

Careful workmanship in the frame is a sign of regard for the print, but especially the element of craftsmanship so crucial to the art of the woodblock print. That shared trait is also another basis for harmony between the two arts.

Both prints are archivally framed with a 4-ply acid-free rag mat, acid-free backing, and Museum Glass.

See more examples of how we frame Japanese prints in the portfolio, here. My post, A Natural Harmony, discusses framing Japanese prints in more detail.

—Tim Holton

This is a copper relief of a nordic ship by American Arts and Crafts metalsmith Albert Berry. We framed the piece, which is 20-1/2″ x 16″, in a 4″ wide cassetta in quarter sawn white oak with Dark Medieval Oak stain. The round cap moulding and coved sight mould are carved, with a plain mortise and tenon flat between. I’m pleased with how the forms and texture of the frame resonate with the repousse. The architectural construction makes an especially effective window on the historical subject.British born Albert Berry (1878-1949) moved to New England as a child. He studied at RISD and worked as a designer for Tiffany, among others, before migrating to the Pacific northwest in 1904. Settling first in Alaska, he met and married his wife, Erwina, and the couple open their first shop offering, according to Askart.com, “hammered copper wares including desk sets, vases, lamps, and smoking sets that incorporated his interpretation of Pacific Northwest Native Alaskan designs.” In 1918 the couple decamped to Seattle and, with Albert’s brother Wilfred, opened Berry’s Craftshop. Although he died in 1949, the shop survived into the 1970’s.

Available from California Historical Design.

Below are a couple more examples of Albert Berry’s work—a pair of bookends with similar subject matter to our nordic ship repousse, and a picture frame.

Kim Lordier is one pictorial artist who fully appreciates the reciprocal and complementary relationship between a painting and its frame. A few months ago, the artist took home a couple of frames of ours, and then last week brought them back with a pair of her beautiful pastels installed.

This first one is “Twilight Song in Amber,” 14 1/8″ x 19 1/2″. The frame is a No. 230—2 1/4″ in fumed quartersawn white oak with clear linseed oil finish, and an 18 kt gilt slip. One of the main ways a slope profile like this serves a picture is by enhancing perspective. With a view looking down a road or path or stream, a slope frame sustains the picture’s sense of depth and distance, helping it draw us in. And that’s precisely what Kim took advantage of here. She also enjoyed repeating and harmonizing the ochre-brown color—or dark amber referred to by her title?—of the fumed and oiled oak frame with the trees and shrubs in the shaded landscape. The muted, neutral tones of the frame enhance and intensify the rich colors in the picture. Also notice how she used the ray flake pattern in the wood of the frame to echo elements of the picture.

Kim Lordier‘s “Twilight Song in Amber” is available here.

Kim Lordier, “Twilight Song in Amber.” Pastel on paper, 14 1/8″ x 19 1/2″.

The second pastel, shown below, Kim titled “Among the Listening Trees” (14 3/4″ x 10 3/4″). The frame is a No. 17.15 H CV—2 1/2″ with hand carved cable pattern, in walnut with clear linseed oil finish. It has a bronze waxed slip. Compared to the first painting, this image of a barn against a relatively flat backdrop of eucalyptus trees has less perspectival depth, making it more suited to a flat frame. The carved patterns at the frame’s corners suggest a rope—which you’re sure to find hanging right there in the horses’ red tack house.

“Among the Listening Trees” is available here.

Kim Lordier, “Among the Listening Trees.” Pastel on paper, 14 3/4″ x 10 3/4″.

Both paintings exemplify Kim Lordier’s mastery of complements—elements that in juxtaposition and contrast complete and perfect each other. (“Perfect” is another word that means finished or completed, “so as to leave nothing wanting.”) This is most obvious in her use of complementary colors and values, light and shadow. But also, perspective is a matter of the complementary relationship between near and far—the road at our feet in the foreground contrasted with the distant hill with its beckoning sun. Then there’s the way the verticality of her stately eucalyptus trees reaching high complement the horizontal ground and earthbound life they preside over.

Even Kim’s titles refer to complements: the blue of twilight encroaches on the amber tones of the day’s last sunlight on the hill; as the green of the eucalypti complements the red barn, the trees also listen—an act that is the natural complement to two horses (of course there are two, so they can complement each other) who surely have things to converse about.

And Kim’s mastery of complements extends to the reciprocal relationship between picture and frame—two arts attending to two realms that are only fully alive in their interdependent relationship to each other. The picture’s realm of memory or imagination awaits a place in present, tangible reality. As Van Gogh said, “A picture without a frame is like a soul without a body.” What Kim understands is that it is no compromise or liability to have her work be affected by its architectural surroundings—to enhance the picture just as the picture enhances its setting. The frame is not a constraint but an opportunity—a chance for the vision the artist has created to join the real world of its architectural setting. The re-presentational picture when it leaves the easel yearns for its mission to be fulfilled and completed by a frame that will present it. Meanwhile, the empty frame hung on the wall is like window trim without the window—the vista, the prospect, the revelation—to transform the picture frame into a window frame and fulfill its own role. As natural complements, picture and frame together complete the window, and each other. The picture is perfect.

This is one of the great lessons fifty years of framing, and working with extraordinary painters like Kim Lordier, has taught me.

Again, Kim Lordier‘s “Twilight Song in Amber” is available here, and her “Among the Listening Trees” is available here.

—Tim Holton

The May issue of Picture Framing Magazine includes the first installment of a series I’m writing called “A Joiner’s Art: Frame Making as Woodworking.” You can read it here.

I’m very excited to have the chance to contribute to my industry’s trade magazine. It’s a great opportunity to share many of the insights and understandings I’ve developed about frame making over the past 50 years. (Yep, I started framing pictures as an after-school job in 1975.)

The point of the series is, first of all, to remind my fellow picture framers of the roots of our trade in the medieval and early Renaissance joiner’s shop, then, as the article says, “to demonstrate that, far from being a dead tradition with nothing to offer today’s picture framers, those old roots offer timeless methods that are eternally vital to the art of the frame (as the trees they’re made of are eternally vital to human life and civilization). They are not only the historical background of the art, they are the timeless basis and source of its vitality.” With this series, I hope “to foster appreciation of the joiner’s frame; and…to encourage those framers with the capacity and interest to…incorporate the craft into their frame shops.”

Again, you can read the article here.

This week we added dozens of frames to our online store. And not only that—the entire inventory of ready-made frames including the new ones, are on sale! We’ve also added a number of frames at a deeper discounts, which you’ll find on our sale page, here. And get another 5% off when you buy three or more frames!

Use the filter to search by size, or for frames for paintings, frames for matted works, diploma and photo frames, etc. We also just added a category for Premium Frames, which includes more elaborate designs like this 18″ x 24″, 4-1/4″ wide carved compound mitered frame in stained walnut with gilt slip.

Check out the sale…

Purchase this frame here. View the main sale page …

Our friends at California Historical Design in Alameda just posted this 1918 Percy Gray (1869-1952) watercolor that we framed for them. The untitled 10″ x 14″ painting depicts a path through oaken hills leading to Mt. Tamalpais.

I made for it a 2-1/2″ wide frame in quarter sawn white oak with carved details. (My design sketch is shown at right.) The basic form is a version of a very low cove, or “dish,” form (No. 300 BC Low), augmented with a strap near the sight edge and some carved details: a running pattern around that strap and a simple bud pattern to articulate the corners. Avi fumed, oiled and waxed the frame. The slip is also fumed oak, but finished in bronze wax.

I love the harmony of fumed oak finished with linseed oil and wax, as well as the touch of bronze, with Gray’s tonalist palette. It’s one of the principles of tonalism to capture the harmonizing atmospheric light that unifies the natural creation and beckons us down such paths as this one—that calls us to remember our part in the life of the land we live on.

We’ve had the privilege of framing quite a few works by Percy Gray. A longer post on the artist can be found here.

Again, this lovely and significant work is available from California Historical Design. Also just posted by them are two historical tiles we framed: this Moresque tile of Yosemite Falls and this Rookwood vellum landscape tile.

More examples of how we’ve framed watercolors may be found in the Portfolio…

—Tim Holton

Process—

A corner of the raw frame just before finishing.

This is a classic California impressionist painting by British-born Frank Montague Moore (1877-1967), painted in the 1920’s. The oil painting, which is 12″ x 16″, is set in a 2-1/2″ wide stained quarter sawn white oak frame in our No. 308.0 profile—a simple scoop with a bead near the sight edge, and has a 23 kt gilt slip. Framed for and offered by California Historical Design.

Forty-one of Moore’s paintings are very handsomely framed by the historic bridge at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. The so-called “picture bridge” was restored a few years ago. One of the paintings, shown at right as featured on a postcard, includes eucalyptus trees Moore treated in a similar manner to those in the painting above. More images of the bridge are below—the first image showing the bridge today, and two more period postcards.

From Wikipedia:

Frank Montague Moore was born November 24, 1877, in Taunton, England, and studied at the Liverpool Art School and the Royal Institute. He immigrated to the United States and took additional painting lessons from Henry Ward Ranger. In 1910, he moved from New York City to Hawaii, where he worked as a purchasing agent for Hawaii Plantations.^[2] He became the first director of the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1924, but resigned in 1927, shortly before the museum opened.^[3]

In 1928, he left Hawaii for California, where he painted 41 murals collectively known as the Picture Bridge for the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena and many easel paintings of California landscapes.^[4] Moore died in Carmel, California, on March 5, 1967.^[5]

Again, this lovely painting is available from California Historical Design.

—Tim Holton

This is a woodblock print by Shiro Kasamatsu (1898-1991), “Kasugana, Nara.” Kasamatsu played a significant role in the early twentieth century shin-hanga (new prints) movement. But this print, made in 1961, is from the artist’s later period, when he was one of very few shin-hanga artists who made the transition to the sōsaku-hanga (creative prints) movement. The image size of the print is 14-1/2″ x 10″.

No. 22.0

The mitered frame, which measures 21″ x 16″ over all, is in profile No. 22.0—3/4″ in walnut with black wax. The simple profile is beveled on both the inside and outside, with a peak at the center, so the shape mimics the rhythmic pattern of angles in the prints. That pattern is also echoed in the frame’s corners with splayed proud splines. A painted slip pulls out the blue background.

Three other Kasamatsu prints we framed are shown in this blog post.

Learn more about Shiro Kasamatsu at Moonlit Sea Prints…

See more examples of how we’ve framed Japanese prints in the Portfolio…

—Tim Holton

I’m proudly adding this one to the “Japanese Print Tradition” section of the Portfolio. It’s a beautiful example from outstanding early twentieth century American print maker Helen Hyde (1868 – 1919). We set “A Mexican Coquette” (1912; colored woodcut, 10″ diameter) in a hand carved No. 14 CV Rounded Corner frame—3/4″ wide, in walnut, stained black. The basic version of the frame, No. 14 CV, has always been popular and a go-to especially for woodblock prints (the most basic “printable frame”), and we often interrupt the carved panel near the corners with stops. But the curved lines that are such a salient characteristic of this print, and the vernacular setting, suggested to me these simple rounded corners.

You can’t beat a completely plain rag mat for woodblock prints and etchings. That blank expanse not only allows the eye to focus on the fine detail of the print, but is also the perfect complement, and thus enhancement, to that detail.