Framing Gustave Baumann Prints

Posted on September 29th, 2012

Over the years we’ve had the pleasure to frame quite a few prints by master American printmaker Gustave Baumann (1881-1971). Here are three just finished:

Gustave Baumann, “Early Spring, Brown County”

Gustave Baumann, “Rio Pecos”

Gustave Baumann, “Coast Range”

The frames are stained walnut compounds.

The flats are thin to act more as mats, although they’re on top of the glass, and cover the wide margins of the prints. The profiles are wide (4-1/2″ + 3/16″ gilt slips) but simple using 1/8″ radius coves to create a simple rhythm of lines. Here’s a corner detail:

The customer was very kind to let me use this image below of his hallway where he displays earlier Baumanns we’ve framed for him.

(Ted Ellison photo)

More Baumanns we’ve framed can be found in the “Prints and Works on Paper” section of the Portfolio.

Framing James Cosgrove

Posted on May 23rd, 2012

A customer recently brought in this little (5-3/4″ x 8″) oil on board by Glasgow painter James Cosgrove(b. 1939). The stained walnut frame was designed entirely to the painting, with a carved cushion rim around a flat with fine carved flutes. I’m very pleased with the harmony of line and form, as well as color—a rare occasion when black works best with a painting.

Framing Dwight Clay Holmes

Posted on May 10th, 2012

We just framed this 20″ x 16″ canvas by Texan Dwight Clay Holmes (1900-1986) titled “Red Bud”.

I was especially pleased with the form of the frame profile as an enhancement to both the graceful use of line in the painting (hence the reeding) and the loose brush work (hence the coarse, wild figured quartersawn white oak as well as the carved convex sight edge element). This frame is similar to one on the Charles Partridge Adams, below, which I wrote about here.

I realize these are pretty similar to the frame on the Louis Apol a couple of entries back. But it’s useful to compare three ostensibly similar frames with nevertheless significant differences when considered with respect to the pictures they’re on.
To make just one point about the frame on the Apol, it’s a slope; you can see the reason behind that choice. Focusing on these two paintings of trees, on the face of it, they’re very similar. Yet the forms of the trees in the Holmes are much finer and more linear and graceful. The most significant difference between these two frames, which are basically flat, is that while the Adams’s frame is perfectly flat outside the reeding and is squared off at the outside, the frame on the Holmes has a subtle cove up toward the outside of the profile terminating in a rounded outside edge. This curl up is basically as subtle as possible while still reading to the viewer. Also, although you can’t see it in the photo, the back is cut in giving this frame a much lighter feel than the blockier one on the Adams. This is a good example of how important it is for the frame design to be alive to the particular characteristics of a painting.

I love how subtle profile forms like this interact with the ray flake in the quartersawn oak. In this case, the rays curve laterally with the subtle cove of the profile (especially on the top), and so echo the curving lines of the trees. Note too the variation on the corner carving, which I focused on in the first entry. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the double reeds on the Adams frame echo the parallel tree trunks throughout the painting, whereas the red bud trunks stray off on their own and so are framed with a single bead, the second bead added to articulate the corners.

Finally, note that these are two bright sunny paintings very suitably served by dark wood frames. A narrow gold liner on the Holmes seems to reflect the sunlight in the painting, which seems very natural (like a window frame viewed from inside a house would reflect the sunny landscape outside). But the entire frame in gold would fail to complement the use of light with its complementary shadow tones.

Most importantly, I think both settings succeed at the great and primary purpose of the picture frame which is to sustain the spirit of the picture into the architectural real.

Framing Contemporary Photographs–Geoffrey Agrons, 2

Posted on May 8th, 2012

A couple of years ago I posted an entry about framing Geoffrey Agrons’s wonderful photographs. Here are a couple more we just did.

This first one, “Big, Big Love” is in an exhibit opening this month at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. It’s framed in a No. 123.8 Century Series flat, 3″ wide, in stained walnut.

The second example, a still life, is framed in our most basic mortise-and-tenon frame, the Aurora, with a liner that’s an ogee with a bead at the sight edge. The outer frame is a nod to the art of the cabinetmaker, while the refined liner picks up the forms and fine lines of the photo.

See more of Geoffrey’s work on his site, here.

For more on framing photographs close, i.e., without a visible mat, read my article “Close Framed Photographs,” for Picture Framing Magazine.

Framing Louis Apol

Posted on April 30th, 2012

Here’s a notable historical work for you. Just framed this beautiful European landscape by Louis Apol (Dutch, 1850-1936), “A Forest in Winter” (oil on canvas, 32 x 25). (Click image for a larger view.)

The stained quartersawn white oak frame is a 4-1/2″ wide slope with a carved cushion sight edge. The double reeding outside the cushion, with carved stops near the corners are a nod to the delicate strokes that define the trees, and give the frame a degree of refinement in sympathy with the artist’s well-honed touch. The 1/4″ gilt slip catches the sunlight. We were aiming for a suitably rustic but sensitive feel, a quiet mood, simple. No “before” shot of this in a gold frame, but can you see how the dark wood suits the painting much better than a gold one would? How it’s like the shadows in the painting, and how the shadowy feel of the frame leads your eye to the picture and acts as a foil to the picture, and in particular to the sunlight? And, of course, the rustic feel connects you to the rustic subject matter much more successfully than would a gold frame.

Below is a corner sample of the frame design (without the carved stops on the reeding).

Re-framing William Hubacek

Posted on February 17th, 2012

Just framed this 10″ x 14″ oil on canvas by notable Californian William Hubacek (1871-1958), rescuing it from a cheap gold setting. The job offers a good before-and-after, and a good example, I think, of how a frame helps or hinders your ability to see the picture:

The frame’s flat coving up to a carved cushion back edge. In quartersawn white oak with Weathered Oak stain. Very oak-y. Much more sympathetic to the spirit of a very lovely painting.

Framing Charles Partridge Adams—Simple Corner Carving

Posted on January 19th, 2012

We recently got to frame this early twentieth century landscape by Charles Partridge Adams (1858-1942). At just 10″ x 14″, it’s humble in size as well as subject matter, and loosely painted—all aspects suggesting a fairly simple frame with a bit of carving.

The tree trunks brought to mind the profile we’d come up with a few months ago for Paul Kratter’s view of Lake Tahoe, “Twisted Pine Above Emerald Bay,” below—a flat with a double reed near the sight edge and a carved flattened ovolo (convex form) at the sight edge—but I thought I’d refine it a little, adapting it to Adams’s more “dapple-y” style.

So I decided to enhance the lines formed by the double reeds. So added a simple pattern of carved stops to the reeds near the corners. I’m pleased with the effect. I’d like to do more with simple corner carving this year.

Framing Contemporary Paintings—Andrij Korchynsky

Posted on January 18th, 2012

This recent job, a 23″ x 32″ contemporary oil painting on canvas by Ukrainian-American artist Andrij Korchynsky, offers a simple lesson in two key elements in frame design: line and form. Despite the loose style, the sweeping lines and angularity of the roofs suggested the form of the profile—a broad, 4″ flat sweeping up to a scoop and then beveling back. (The profile is No. 321.) With respect to line, a narrow raised panel at the sight edge, at the same width as the lines defining the structures, adopts the painter’s standard. A 1/4″ liner oil-gilded with 23 kt gold leaf gives it just the right highlight in keeping with the painting’s palette.

The wood is quartersawn white oak with Saturated Medieval Oak stain.

Andrij Korchynsky, “Old Yard,” n.d. (1990’s?). Oil on canvas, 23″ x 32″.

Framing Ed Bearden—and Playing with Chamfers

Posted on January 16th, 2012

I really enjoy chamfering and playing with chamfers as a design element.

Here’s an acrylic on paper, recently framed, by mid-century Texan Edward Carpenter Bearden (1919-1980). We had fun coming up with this adaptation of our Aurora frame with flat mortise-and-tenon corners. We often use it with a chamfer all around the sight edge. In this case we played off the mountain peaks in the picture by adding the sets of points near the corners. On the same theme, Trevor shaped the corner plugs with a peak rather than our usual pillow form.

The frame profile is 1-1/2″ wide, and the wood is black walnut greyed down with a black wash.

Might have framed this piece close, but the customer preferred to mat it, in part to scale up a fairly small painting (about 11″ x 17″) to make it a stronger element on the wall—a perfectly good reason. The grey mat avoids the separating effect of white matting.

Another entry on chamfering is here.

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