Just makin up poems in my head as I climb toward Mount Tamalpais.
See up there, as beautiful a mountain as you’ll see anywhere in the world,
a beautiful shape to it, I really love Tamalpais. —The character Japhy in The Dharma Bums (1958), by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac and his hiking pal and fellow beat poet Gary Snyder, on whom the character Japhy was based, weren’t alone. Of all the land features that frame San Francisco Bay, none is more loved than Mt. Tamalpais. By the second world war, the mountain was already covered with trails well-used by weekending Bay Area residents. To the Miwok people, it was sacred.

So it’s appropriate that a nice big, 18″ x 36″ view of the sleeping lady (see below) is a centerpiece of Beloved California IX, our current show (running through the 28th). In “Majestic Mt. Tam” by Richard Lindenberg, the mountain, lit by the setting sun, reflects off a glassy creek in the foreground. We set the oil on canvas in a carved walnut mortise and tenon frame with a coppery bronze slip. Trevor Davis made it.

Richard Lindenberg
“Majestic Mt. Tam”
Oil on canvas, 18″ x 36″. $5,000 framed.
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Here are a few recent and particularly seasonal carved and painted corner samples I made. The middle one’s soft maple and the other two are walnut. All have simple carving and are painted with linseed oil paint.

By the way, there’s still time for us to fill most orders for holiday gifts. But don’t put it off much longer!

And don’t forget about Beloved California, which runs through the end of the year. It’s full of exquisite works that would make wonderful gifts!

Wait—there’s a few more!

When designing a frame, I ask myself, what is this picture about? I mean in terms of artistic elements such as color, form, line, and pattern that the frame can honor and enhance. With this 1940 woodblock print, “Chagrin D’Amour: Kusai, Est Carolines,” (15-1/2″ x 11-3/4″) by Paul Jacoulet (1896-1960), I could have gone with color. But its incredibly delicate lines are what captivated me.

I’ve enjoyed shaping the inside edge of frames and accenting that shape with a slender 1/8″ slip (like on this Utagawa Kunisada print), and thought I’d try that technique with this piece. I homed in on the boldest line and what it’s doing: the woman’s black hair framing her face. The lines of the frame then started to come to me. The fact that the artist was French had something to do with it. Those lines are very French, n’est-ce pas? The frame profile is flat, its narrow sections 3/4″ wide. Oiled walnut is a perfect neutral foil to the color, and is the color of the woman’s face but in a darker shade. The slip is also walnut, but stained black, of course.

Paul Jacoulet’s outstanding artwork and extraordinary personal story are well worth exploring. You might start here.

Many more examples of how we frame Japanese prints may be found in our Portfolio.

Marin County painter Erik Tiemens has taken part in every one of our annual Beloved California exhibits. We’ve mostly shown his oil paintings. But this year, for Beloved California IX, three of his four pieces are watercolor and gouache. “A Landscape from Memory” captures a pastoral valley and that wonderful effect of the sun bursting through after a rainstorm (something we just experienced today here in slightly less pastoral Berkeley). The frame is our No. 300 BC Low at 2-1/2″ wide. The shallow cove mimics the broad sweep of the valley. It’s in quartersawn white oak with Saturated Medieval Oak stain, and has a bronze slip.

Beloved California IX runs through the holidays, closing December 28. Come enjoy the inspired landscape views of Erik Tiemens and twenty-one other premier regional painters.

Erik Tiemens
“A Landscape From Memory”
watercolor and gouache on paper, 10 1/8″ x 14 1/8″. $3,400 framed.
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Since the early days of the Monterey Peninsula artists’ colony, a certain mystical quality has lured painters to the area. Artists like Charles Rollo Peters accentuated that quality by painting the Peninsula in the moonlight. Kim Lordier‘s pastel “Point Lobos Magic” proves that the spell endures.

Framed in a 3-1/2″ wide stained oak cove profile with two carved elements: a cushion back edge and raised strap near the sight edge. Both of those elements have paint rubbed into them in the blue and green of the painting. A gilt slip adds the finishing touch.

“Point Lobos Magic” is just one of 63 paintings featured in Beloved California IX, our current all-gallery show celebrating the Northern California landscape. Kim was here last Saturday taking part in a well-attended and festive opening reception. She not only got lots of props, but sold another seascape—the 12″ x 16″ “Rolling In” (at right)—to a long-time fan.

Beloved California IX is on through December 28. Come and enjoy it!

Kim Lordier
“Point Lobos Magic”
Pastel on Archival Board, 24″ x 18″.
$6,800 framed.
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Simon Addyman is an oil painter we’ve admired for a very long time, so it is wonderful to announce that he’s joined the roster of The Holton Studio Gallery. Simon will be featured in Beloved California IX, opening today. We expect Simon Addyman to be here for the reception from 2 to 4. Hope you can come too!

This is one of Simon’s I especially love. It’s called “Sunlit Trees.” The 10″ x 12″ is framed in a stained quartersawn white oak No. 1.4 CV—2″ with bronze slip.

Simon Addyman
“Sunlit Trees”
Oil on linen panel, 10″ x 12″. SOLD.

James McGrew called today with great news—he’s on the road from Zion National Park and headed our way, hoping to be here Saturday for the opening reception for Beloved California IX. But there could be a hitch: he’s going by way of Yosemite and it’s supposed to be snowing up there and might be too beautiful to leave! We’d sure love to see him here, but in any case, he’ll be present in spirit. The exhibition includes three of his Yosemite paintings, and two are exquisite snow scenes. “Sentinel Rock and Clearing Snow Storm,” 12″ x 9″, at right, graces the show’s postcard, in fact.

“Half Dome, Oxbow in Winter,” 8″ x 12″, below, is also an oil on linen on board. Its frame is a 2-1/4″ wide stained quartersawn white oak cove with carved elements at the sight edge and back edge and a white gold slip.

Please join us from 2 to 4 this Saturday, November 16, for the opening of “Beloved California IX: Twenty-Two Painters with a Passion for Place.” We’re expecting many of the artists—and hoping James makes it! But if we don’t see him we’ll rest assured he’s doing his part in celebrating our state’s incomparable beauty.

“Beloved California IX” will run through the end of the year, and will be online as well.

James McGrew painting Yosemite in the snow.

John Ruskin wrote that part of “the glory of a great picture” is that “it speaks with the voices of many; the efforts of thousands dead, and their passions, are in the pictures of their children today. Not with the skill of an hour, nor of a life, nor of a century, but with the help of numberless souls, a beautiful thing must be done.”* As a student of art in London during Ruskin’s day, it’s quite likely that the English artist Charles W. Bartlett (1860 – 1940) absorbed, directly or indirectly, the great art critic’s insight; in any case he practiced its wisdom. In 1913, Bartlett and his wife traveled to Asia, arriving in Japan in 1915. There he met Watanabe Shōzaburō, the great woodblock publisher, and benefited from the expertise of not only the master but the numerous carvers and printers he employed. Watanabe was the driving force of the Shin-Hanga movement—which he named—to revive the artistic efforts of those “numberless souls” who had contributed over centuries to Japan’s great ukiyo-e tradition.

A couple of years ago I posted about framing this Charles Bartlett woodblock print, at right, of the Sikh temple at Amritsar. Recently, two more prints by the artist came our way. Both prints are dated 1916. Like the first one, these depict famous temples in India.

The 1″ wide flat frames are oiled walnut, and like the earlier frame, these have a blue painted groove echoing Bartlett’s exquisitely fine line work and gorgeous blue ink. The new frames also have special corners designed with an eye to the ornamented temple architecture depicted, but on these, that touch was accomplished with corner spandrels. It was the pattern of the arches on the little structure in this first print below that suggested the idea. The slightly different pattern for the Taj Mahal came from photos of that temple’s interior.

The architectural subject matter of the prints they house and Bartlett’s evident regard for such historic architectural sites essentially designed these frames. For frame making, the great well of tradition created by the “numberless souls” Ruskin praises is not only our vast heritage of pictorial arts but the entire world history of architectural ornament and decorative furnishings—an unfathomably deep well of help and inspiration for the frame maker and the architecture of the picture frame.

Charles W. Bartlett (1860-1940), “Udaipur,” 1916. 8 3/4″ x 11 3/4″.

Charles W. Bartlett (1860-1940), “Taj Mahal, Twilight,” 1916; 9 15/16″ x 14 1/2″

 

Close-ups of the spandrels, which I cut out with a fret saw before inlaying them into the rabbet. (See third process photo, below.)

Process—

A year ago we framed the Deb Stoner photo at right. Below are two more photos by the Portland photographer, both framed a couple of months ago.

This first one is a 14″ x 11″ sepia-toned print of bleeding hearts titled “The Liberals” (get it?). The 2″ profile in walnut stained Nut Brown is our No. 503, chosen for its undulating shape which echoes the forms of the flowers. A pale gold slip adds the finishing touch.The color photo of roses, below, is 11″ x 15″. The 2-1/2″ wide frame is No. 134—also chosen to echo the forms of the petals—in quartersawn white oak with dark Medieval Oak stain. It also has a pale gold slip.