About

The same corner of Main Street since 1983.

A custom framing studio in downtown Rochester, Michigan.

The workshop’s story

The story

Jim and Alice Foster opened The Framer’s Workshop in 1983, in a downtown Rochester that looked considerably different than it does now. They picked a storefront on North Main and never moved out of it.

In the four decades since, the work hasn’t changed much. Someone comes in with something they care about (a painting, a photograph, a jersey, a letter) and we figure out together how it should be seen and how to keep it that way. Some of those pieces have come back a second time, brought in by the children of the people who first framed them.

What changed is everything around it. Big-box framing arrived and left again. Then online framing arrived. The studio stayed the way it was, because the thing we’re good at doesn’t get faster when you automate it.

The Team

Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover. Content about the team and the handover.

Inside the workshop

How it works

You bring in the piece, or  send a photo.

No appointment needed. Bring the actual thing if you can; colors read differently in person, and size matters more than people expect.

We look at it together.

What is it, where’s it going, what’s the light like in that room. Half the decisions get made from those three answers.

Materials.

Mat, moulding, glazing. We’ll show you options against the actual piece rather than from a catalogue, and we’ll tell you where it’s worth spending and where it isn’t. Not everything needs museum glass.

You approve it before anything is cut.

Including online orders. If a choice won’t work (wrong proportion, wrong glazing for that light) we’ll say so before we build it.

We build it here.

By hand, in this building. Usually about [X] weeks.

UV-filtering glazing

Blocks 90% of the light that causes fading.

Acid-free conservation matboard

Cotton rag, pH neutral. It won’t burn a line into the edge of your print.

Craft & material

Solid American hardwoods: walnut, oak, maple, ash

Joined and finished here.

archival mounting

Reversible hinges, no permanent adhesive.

Rochester

The Art & Apples Festival brings over two hundred artists to Rochester every Labor Day weekend, and for a few weeks afterward this place fills up with things people bought there and haven’t figured out how to hang yet. That’s been true for about as long as the festival has.

We’re on the merchants’ association, we frame for Rochester Schools and other local institutions, and there’s a reasonable chance we’ve framed something on a wall you’ve stood in front of in this town.

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