This month’s Picture Framing Magazine again features our work. The 17th century map by Dutch cartographer Joan Blaeu, which I posted about here, was recognized as the Design of the Month. Since our first Design of the Month three years ago, we’ve been chosen five times for the trade journal’s regular feature!

The magazine seems to especially like what we do with antique Dutch maps. In March, our framing of a map by Joan Blaeu’s father Willem Blaeu was featured (and also made the cover of the issue); and in June 2021, PFM picked this handling of a map of the Americas. But on a very different note, for last December’s issue, they chose our framing of a large color photograph by Stephen Goldblatt. And in April 2023, the magazine recognized our setting for a painting on paper, “Jormungandr” by Milivoj Ćeran.

PFM also published an excellent profile of Holton Studio in its March 2021 issue, available here.

My last post was about framing a set of three identical American Arts and Crafts tiles dating from about 1908, and made by AE Baggs of Marblehead Pottery. This is a set of six tiles, each one 6″ x 6″, by one of the great English Arts and Crafts ceramicists, William De Morgan (1839-1917). The outside dimensions of the mortise and tenon frame are 9″ x 42″. The members are 1-1/2″ wide on the top and bottom, with 3″ sides. The frame’s made in stained quartersawn white oak.

Like the Baggs frame, Trevor and I collaborated on this one. He built it and I carved it. The carving carries out the repeat pattern. That’s my design at right. I let the tip of the leaf on the left side poke out beyond the edge of the frame.

Evelyn & William De Morgan

De Morgan was married to the wonderful Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn De Morgan, and was a close friend and collaborator of William Morris’s, designing tiles as well as stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. It was a circle steeped in and devoted to the notion that architecture was the mother of all the arts, and the product of the cooperation of those arts. As with the Marblehead set, this framing was executed in that spirit.

It’s destined to hang in a suitably significant architectural location: over my customer’s fireplace in her beautiful Arts and Crafts home.

This is a set of carved matte green triptych tiles made around 1908 by Arthur Baggs (1886-1947) a few years after he founded the Marblehead Pottery. Each tile is 6-1/4″ square. We made the frame in quartersawn white oak (a natural choice for this image of oak trees) with Saturated Medieval Oak stain. Outside dimensions are about 8″ x 26″. Trevor and I collaborated on the setting for Mr. Baggs’s work. Trevor built the mortise and tenon frame, I carved the two dividers to connect and harmonize with the carved tiles.

When we frame pictures, we’re giving them architectural place. Although paintings were originally part of architecture—the first paintings were murals and frescoes—we tend to forget that old connection. Tiles, however, we continue to recognize as part of architecture, and a tile maker like Arthur Baggs as a member of one of the many trades taking part in building. So whenever I frame tiles I’m very conscious of that old collaborative understanding of architecture: the work of diverse trades, each one distinct but alive to and with regard for the others, all joined in the larger work of art that is a building.

This is that idea in microcosm.

It’s always lovely to watch a show come together. But this one we’re enjoying seeing bloom before our eyes. “California Wildflowers” opens June 29, and its wonderful. My daughter Ella gets credit for the idea. (Good call, Ella.) The group show includes eighteen painters.

Here’s the Tia Kratter still life watercolor painting we’re using for the publicity, including the postcard. (If you’re on our mailing list, you should get the card next week. If you want to be on our list, shoot us an email.) “Vic’s Picks” is 10″ x 12″ (13-1/2″ x 15-1/2″ outside frame dimensions). We set it in a 2″ walnut cove profile with a gilt cove sight edge—the gold is 18 kt pale—and cushion back edge with a simple carved accent near the corners.

Flowers are always fun to frame because of the opportunity for harmony found in the similarity of form between the frame and a flower—how a frame radiates out from the picture like the petals of a flower.

With all the rain we had last winter,  this spring brought a riot of life and color. Our painters have reveled in it all, and responded with a great variety of joyful still lifes and landscapes.

Please come join us for the opening reception, Saturday, June 29 from 2 to 4. The show runs through August 3.

The show will also be online here.

To celebrate 15 years of showing Terry Miura, the Gallery is currently featuring the artist’s paintings. A popular teacher and greatly admired by the region’s landscape painters, Terry’s earned the lofty status of an artist’s artist. He’s always been a big fan our frames and supporter of our work—and we appreciate it!

Come enjoy the exhibit, showing through June 8. View Terry’s work on his page…

Our friend Karima Cammell, whose show “High Water” we hosted here in 2021, was chosen from thousands of entrants for a solo show at Brea Gallery in Brea (Orange County), California. We had the great honor of framing most of Karima’s work for for the exhibit. Titled, “The Light Gets In,” the show runs through June 23.

Among the works we framed is “DCM Triptych,” below. We set Karima’s painted and gilded panels in walnut mortise and tenon frames hinged together. The frames were carved, stippled, and gilded to extend the artist’s design. View all the other works in the show on Brea Gallery’s webpage, here.

“A(r)mour,” self-portrait by Karima Cammell

The blurb for the show explains that

In her artistic practice, Karima employs traditional media such as egg tempera, oil paint, gilding, and glass, viewing herself as much as a creator of objects as an image maker. Her artistic approach reflects a devotional attitude, prioritizing candor, craftsmanship, and reverence for the inherited legacy passed down from her mentors and forebears.

In that wide embrace of the arts and crafts and a Morrissian reverence for life lies the reason, I believe, for the studio’s affinity for her approach, and why Karima’s always a dream for us to work with. 

Visit the webpage for Karima’s show “The Light Gets In” at Brea Gallery…

View “High Water,” Karima’s 2021 show at the Holton Studio Gallery…

Here are two historical California landscape paintings by turn-of-the-century Bay Area painter Manuel Valencia (c. 1856 – 1935). The oils on canvas have no dates, but are said to have been done around 1910. We re-framed them for our friends at California Historical Design.

The first one, which is 20″ x 24″, came to us in the frame at right, and is shown below in its new frame.

We set both paintings in No. 4001 through mortise-and-tenon frames, in stained quartersawn white oak, with carved ovolo liners finished with bronze wax. The side members are 2-1/2″ wide, and the top and bottom rails are 3″ wide. Raised square plugs articulate the corners. Trevor Davis made them.

This second painting, which is 20″ x 30″, came to us in the frame at right, and is shown below in its new frame.

It’s available for purchase from California Historical Design, here. The first painting is available here.

More on Manuel Valencia…

—Tim Holton

Thomas Hill (1829-1908) was born in Birmingham, England, and immigrated to New England as a teenager. In 1851, he married Charlotte Elizabeth Hawkes and started his large family (eventually having nine children; grandchildren would include Norman Rockwell). At age 24, he began studying painting, and before long befriended members of the Hudson River School, like Benjamin Champney. (We framed one great example, here, from a favorite destination of outings Hill went on with these artists, the White Mountains of New Hampshire.) In 1861, Hill moved his family to San Francisco. Four years later, in the company of painter Virgil Williams and photographer Carlton Watkins, he took what is evidently his first trip to Yosemite—the place he’s most closely associated with, and where, several years later, he would set up shop at the Wawona Hotel. On the original trail in to the Valley, the inn served as an ideal location for the artist to provide tourists with souvenirs of what was invariably a memorable visit to the natural wonder that is Yosemite Valley.

This painting by Hill, measuring 24″ x 20″, is an example of those works. The frame we made for it is a carved compound mitered frame, 3-1/2″ wide, in quartersawn white oak with Dark Medieval Oak stain.

Thomas Hill, view of El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls, 26″ x 21″.

The customer had seen on my site another very similar Hill painting of Yosemite Valley—this one at left—and liked its gilt oak liner with painted lettering captioning the scene and the majestic landmarks, El Capitan and Bridal Veil Falls. While we’d made a new frame for this earlier Hill, its liner was original. The customer asked us to replicate that for his painting.

Trevor Davis made the frame. I did the lettering on the liner.

Hill’s most famous painting is his huge 8′ x 12′ “The Last Spike” (1881), honoring the 1869 completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. But his enduring reputation has at least as much to do with his paintings of Yosemite and the powerfully influential part they played in the conservation of American wilderness. This is evident in the fact that his View of the Yosemite Valley, commemorating Lincoln’s 1864 Yosemite Grant, was chosen as the backdrop for the head table at President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Luncheon in 2009, hosted by the Senate in Statuary Hall.

More posts on framing Thomas Hill may be found here and here.

—Tim Holton

A quick post today to announce that most of the frames in our inventory are now on sale. Discounts are up to 60%. Sale goes through next Saturday, May 4. You can shop the sale on our ecommerce site, here.

Many of the best discounts are on odd size frames, which are often especially interesting to artists, who can make pictures to fit these frames.

We don’t have many sales. Our last one was more than two years ago. So this is a great opportunity! Check it out…