People at Work #7 : : Picture Framer

I have been acutely aware of how difficult it is, after living for such a long time in Berkeley, to find services that I always took for granted before we moved.

I was uncertain how to find a framer for some of my neighbor's prints. A friend who is a paper conservator always impressed on me the importance of protecting valued works on paper. Many years ago, when Dana was in preschool, I took one of her pictures, done on the back of some old style computer paper to an elderly Japanese man in Berkeley. He helped me choose the perfect frame and mat without commenting on the fact that I was spending a considerable amount of money on a kid's finger painting on paper with perforations reinforced with tape down the middle. As I left his shop he couldn't resist saying, "next time try to get her to do it on better paper":

For Ann's South African print, I picked a framing place at random from Google's offerings, and drove slowly down one of the busiest streets in town, lined with new shopping centers and strip malls, feeling dubious that they would yield what I was looking for. When I finally found it, I knew it would be just what I wanted. Inside an old house on a quiet block I found Bob, who was pleasant, knowledgeable, and understood the importance of choosing the right combination of materials to protect and enhance a piece of art. 

Trying to get a picture of him and still capture the feeling of his cluttered but organized workspaces (extra) was less successful, but they were the only picturesI took today.