Old World craftsmanship is everyday business at Katayama Framing, 2258 NW Raleigh.

Fragile, microscopically thin petals of 22-karat gold leaf are painstakingly applied to frames in a technique essentially unchanged since the 13th century. A team of artisans, expert in hand-carving intricate relief sculptures, designing linens and silk mats, or applying paint to look as if it was brushed on by a Renaissance craftsman, pampers and preens museum-quality artworks to a framed perfection.

With more than 200 years of collective picture-framing experience, the Katayama
Framing team of 10 employees includes:
•Beth Owens and Linda Armentrout, who have been gold and silver gilders at Katayama for 13 and 18 years respectively.
•Nancy Batten, a Japanese and European wood carver with Katayama since 1994.
•Deborah Kerr, a coloris, has been there 11 years.
•For the past 10 years, Donna Swint has been a specialist in textile and tapestry needlepoint.
•Scott Moore, who has a master of fine arts degree in wood sculpture, has been fabricating frames at Katayama for five years.

With their combined knowledge and artistry, the shop can create replicas of nearly any historical period frame. The process is a sight to behold. Gold gilders still lay their own gold, a meticulous process that hasn’t been improved upon since gold was first beaten and applied to a gessoed surface in Middle Age Europe. As they lay out individual sheets of thin gold and burnish it to a fine patina, wood workers with crude-looking tools carve incredibly smooth and intricate scroll décor, and textile workers carefully line the art with the finest silk to protect it from the natural elements.

Attention to detail has enabled the shop to forge a reputation as one of the highest-quality custom frame designers on the West Coast. According to Jane Beebe, owner of PDX gallery, Katayama Framing takes on demanding, high-end framing jobs that very few shops in the area can handle. The new and lavish US Courthouse and the Benson Hotel, both in downtown, are recent clients.

“They do excellent work on difficult projects,” she says. “For beautiful, custom-made, gold-leaf frames, no one can touch them.”

The meticulous attention to quality has paid steady dividends over the past decade. Sales have increased at around 12 percent annually and this year the business looks to top the $750,000 barrier. Marketing isn’t a problem—the shop has all the work it wants and 90 to 95 percent of the customers are repeats or referrals---but the business needs to expand.

The company takes its name from Dennis Katayama, the founder, co-owner and vise president of the company. His wife, Marilyn Murdoch, is the president.

“I put out the fires and handle the nuts and bolts stuff,” Murdoch says, “while Dennis takes care of long-term planning and networking.”

In 1988, the pair pooled their talents under one roof with the goal of creating frames as beautiful as the art it holds.

According to Gordon Gilkey, curator of prints and drawings at the Portland Art Musuem for the past two decades, they’ve succeeded. Katayama’s has framed 40 to 50 pieces for the museum, he says. “We like working with them because they’ve got a topnotch crew. Besides having the widest variety of frames, they know how to handle artworks so they aren’t damaged.”

Katayama’s regular clients include the Portland Art Museum, Willamette University’s Mark Sponenburgh antique art collection, and the University of Portland’s historical photo display and Presidents portrait gallery.

Besides art museums and private galleries, interior designers, architectural firms and a wide range of collectors seeking to enhance their homes and businesses with art all knock on Katayama’s door. Although most clients are from the western states, the framers have customers in Asia, Hawaii, the Midwest, and Washington D.C.

Butters Gallery Ltd., one of the three largest galleries in the city, is well known for bringing in art from outside the region, and Katayama frames up to 20 pieces a month for them. Director Jeffrey Butters says Katayama’s constant research and productknowledge enables them to create the most solid and best designed frames he’s ever seen. “They have a great desire to put things together properly, and they stand behind their products,” Butter says. “They frame entire shows for us.”

Katayama, a board member of the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, began custom framing more than 25 years ago when there were only an handful of framers in Portland. (Today there are over 100 in the metro area.) He traveled the West Coast extensively, checking out frame shops everywhere from Vancouver, BC to San Francisco. “I saw techniques and designs that were broadening for me. I self-taught myself just as an interest.”

His first love was the craftsmanship, because it is so hands-on. Then came an unquenchable thirst for a deeper understanding of the worlds of art and painting. He immersed himself in the Old World styles, poring over obscure manuscripts and reading about French mats and gilding and learning which frames matched certain historical periods.

Like the art it enhances and protects, picture frames are highly subjective, he says.
“My personal view is that when we frame a piece of art, we’re giving it a place in time.”

When a finished, framed piece of art goes up on a wall in a person’s home, it should fit in with the surrounding environment, he says. “From 20 feet away, a piece of art isn’t a piece of art—it’s an element on the wall. My plan is to put a piece of wood on it, a frame, a mat, glass, so on, to embellish it, so that from 20 feet away it’s an integral part of the design of the room.”

But at 5 feet away, if the job is done right, it doesn’t matter how the painting is framed, he says. “If it’s a piece of art that’s worthy, you don’t even see the frame, you just see the art that’s inside.”

Most of Katayama’s customers purchase art from galleries and turn to them for assistance in acclimating the piece to its environment, with reference to historical, cultural and geographical perspective. Whether it is a relatively uninformed consumer or a highly sophisticated collector, Katayama says it takes a special person to spend a large sum of money on a painting.

“An ordinary person wouldn’t do that,” he says. “ I think when people spend that
much money for a piece of art, it should be a statement about themselves as well as their
environment.”

Artistic framing has been downplayed since modern framing technologies took hold, Murdoch says that in the last decade, art frames have swayed from the minimalist styles that baby boomers grew up with to value-added custom framing.

“People want the frame to make as much of a statement as the art,” Murdoch says. Katayama recently acquired a 10,000-square-foot warehouse space across the street from its showroom and will be moving its fabrication activities there later this month. They also plan to add a photography and conservation department before the
year’s end.

 

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