Tell us a about Holton Studio Frame-Makers.

Holton Studio Frame-Makers is a frame shop. The core of the business is retail, framing pictures for people who bring us - and, increasingly, send us - their pictures. We do a little wholesale to a handful of really nice shops around the country, and we fill orders for frames, as opposed to the complete framing of pictures. But the heart and soul of the business is framing pictures for people. What makes us exceptional among frame shops is that rather than using mass produced molding we make every frame starting from raw materials. In this way we're bringing frame-making back to the frame shop, returning what's really an art form to how it was practiced before it was over-commercialized and taken over by industrial manufacturing. We've improved on not only the materials and craftsmanship of conventional framing, but restored the organic artistic process of letting the frame design grow out of the particular spirit, characteristics and needs of the artwork and its setting.

By doing things this way we're reviving the rich tradition of cabinetmaker's frames which dates from before the Renaissance. It's a humbler tradition than gilt classical frames, but every bit as rich, and generally much more suitable for pictures and also with respect to the frame's job of linking the picture to its architectural setting. Taking this approach, firmly rooted as it is, opens up wonderful creative possibilities; we're coming up with new frame designs practically every day.

The spirit of what we do is justifiably labeled as Arts and Crafts. And we find a large percentage of our customers live in Craftsman bungalows and collect Arts and Crafts period antiques. But by steeping ourselves in an understanding of the substance of that tradition we've been able to transcend the particular styles people associate with Arts and Crafts and define our job as simply framing pictures as well as we can.

Did you attend art school, or do you regularly take art classes?

I studied history in college. I did study acting for a few years, and far-fetched as it may sound, that was a great influence on my aesthetic sense. Because it not only got me thinking about things like the place of art in life, but taught me about how good artistic work is pulled out of you in an honest, direct response to circumstances. I worked in a frame shop for almost twenty years before opening Holton Studio, and learned a lot there. I did take one weekend carving workshop. Other than that I'm self-taught. From the standpoint of artistic technique - drawing, painting, sculpture, etc., my technique's very limited; I can only draw well enough to make my carving patterns. Luckily I have good instincts for form, proportion and color, and those are two areas framing pictures for twenty years help a great deal in developing. As far as art history and so on, I've relied on my own reading and visits to museums. I found nothing attractive about art schools, most of them being narrow-minded and polluted by the sad state of art taken over by the "Art World" - insulated, hyper-individualistic, hostile to tradition and nature...DON'T GET ME STARTED!

Who or what was the greatest influence on your work?

The landscape and architecture of the Bay Area - especially Berkeley, where I was raised and still live, and Inverness, California (where my family has had a vacation house since I was little) - shaped me as much as my family and community. I knew about Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan and the whole Berkeley Arts and Crafts/Bohemian thing from an early age. The landscape of the Bay Area and California is so vast and beautiful it's not only become a big part of my imaginative world, it's also taught me a humility and respect for nature in general. I feel like whatever I make can never be as beautiful as what's been here all along. All I can do is let it fill me up and celebrate it, and present it to best advantage. In another way traveling and living in Europe when I was young gave me respect for what was here before me - in this case, the material culture. Especially coming from California where there's very little material human history before the early 1900's, the long, cumulative human creative heritage I saw in Europe - especially the unselfconscious creation of folk arts and building - had a powerful effect. I wish more artists would embrace tradition and the folk spirit. That's a huge source of real artistic vitality.

Both of these things I think made me very receptive to the entire Arts and Crafts Movement. I admire so much of the work in that tradition that it's hard to be more specific.

How has your style evolved?

When I started out we just made through mortise-and-tenon frames, mainly because no one else was doing them and they seemed marketable. But it was such an esoteric thing, so limited. The first time somebody got me to make a mitered frame again, after leaving my old framing job, it was so liberating. There's so much more you can do with mitered frames. They're generally so much more effective than mortise-and-tenon frames with joints at 90 degrees, starting with the fact that the 45 degree joints focus the eye better on the picture. It wasn't long before I realized I wanted to get back to just framing pictures as effectively as I can. It was funny how even though our market widened considerably, I realized that a lot of my old customers thought mitered frames weren't Arts and Crafts! Which isn't true at all, but people get very narrow ideas when they get too caught up in the whole matter of style. William Morris - a big hero of mine - said "Don't think too much about style", and I don't. And I like to think that that as much as anything has helped me grow. Because too many people in this thing called "the Arts and Crafts Revival" fixate on style and miss the substance of art, which is what Morris, Ruskin, Stickley and all those people were promoting. Morris's sources were literally all over the map. Today people fixate on not only a particular place and historical moment but on particular artists - like Greene and Greene, or Gustav Stickley. Artists should do their work of making what calls out to be made, doing it the best they can, as honestly as they can, and let other people decide what style it is. The problem-solving and inspiration that go into making things have almost nothing to do with style. Style's just one aspect of the result. And coming to understand that has probably changed my style as much as anything. I'm looser, more versatile - and happier!

Have you had a major shift in media or style? If so, what influenced this shift?

Well, as I said, I used to act and do other work in the theater, so I guess that's a shift in media, to put it mildly - although framing was a day job even then. I'm temperamentally an architect. When I was a kid I passionately wanted to be an architect, so framing pictures kind of fulfilled that passion; I house pictures I suppose - if that doesn't sound too heavy-handed. I've never been driven to make pictures myself. Artistically what I do is fairly simple, but I'm amazed how long it's taken to learn to do it right so that it has the sensitivity, integrity and purpose that make simplicity beautiful. It's easy to make a simple frame, the problem, which so many in the Arts and Crafts Movement did so well, is making it harmonious and unified with the picture.

When I started the business as Holton Furniture and Frame, we also made furniture. But I really needed to focus more. Also custom furniture making is an extremely tough business, in part because the parameters are so undefined for most shops. It seems to me the shops that make it do minimal customization or focus on one type of furniture. I decided to focus on picture framing - what I've always done.

What influenced your choice of media?

I needed a job! I went to work in a frame shop as an after school job my senior year of high school. It wasn't until I burned out on theater when I was around 30 that I really took a hard look at framing. I just decided to make the most of what I'd had going for my whole working life. I guess it's that deeply felt instinct or longing to build on the past that I mentioned earlier. And as I said, I'm temperamentally an architect, so framing satisfied that.

What part of your art work do you enjoy the most?

The greatest thing is having a really nice picture come in, getting a terrific frame design idea for it, making the frame - which I know going in may or may not fulfill my hopes - and having it turn out beautifully. There's this brilliant moment in framing: the picture is fit in the frame from the back; so when it's fit, turning the framed picture over is like an unveiling. And it's not until that moment that you really know how it's going to work out. And when we get it really right, because what we're after is unity and harmony, the end result is much more than the sum of the parts. When you see a picture in the perfect frame, in a frame that feels like it's the only frame that picture can be in, you realize that the frame is vital to life of the picture, not just in preserving it, but in allowing it to take its place in the world - in a particular place where it's really part of the room and the lives lived around it. And even more than that, very frequently it's only when it finds the right frame that the picture sort of fulfills itself by coming into a kind of balance, having the right amount of space around it, the right surrounding colors, shapes, and so on. It's almost like you can't really see a picture until it's in the right setting. Also, a sympathetic setting, a frame that came out of really seeing the picture, makes it easier for other people to see it. I love that. Another great moment is throwing away the crummy metal frame the customer brought it to us in. It's like being in Yosemite and instead of looking at Half Dome from the window of a tour bus you're looking at it from the Great Hall at the Ahwahnee Hotel - or maybe just from John Muir's cabin or a Miwok teepee - but in any case you're seeing it the way it ought to be seen!

What is the most difficult aspect of your artistic process?

Because almost every frame is made from scratch, milling profiles can be nerve-wracking. Some profiles require multiple set-ups. Occasionally toward the end of the process I'll get some bad tear-out that requires the frame be re-milled. Then I have to go into over-time - time spent doing stuff over. Finishing is often difficult, because the quality and color of a finish is so crucial on picture frames. We make it extra hard on ourselves by offering so many options; we have 14 standard stains. Luckily I have a great finisher, Noelle Wolf, who's just about mastered our finishes. Sanding, crucial as it is, is just plain tedious. But when you're making the whole frame yourself you get the satisfaction of having sanded it well. A lot of great, effective frames don't get made because the profile's too hard to sand.

Have you been involved with any "unusual" art projects?

Last year I carved a fireplace (even though I try to focus on framing, a good carving job will entice me). It was a rose pattern in low relief and polychromed - somewhat in the way Arthur and Lucia Mathews did their frames and furniture. Whenever we get to frame a really great painting it's a great pleasure.

Timothy Holton Holton Studio Frame-Makers

What artist do you most admire?

As I said, William Morris is a huge hero. Also I'd say San Francisco's Arthur and Lucia Mathews whose vision of California, which they put into their murals and furnishings, is heart-rending to me because it was so powerfully felt and so much of it is gone. But when it comes down to it it's collective, folk traditions more than individuals that really move me. The old carved wooden houses and churches in rural Norway I saw when I was a boy, Cotswold villages, Mediterranean villages and hill towns, too, and all the carved furnishings - that's the real thing in art. That shows us to ourselves - who we are as both individuals and as a people.