The Studio Shop celebrated its 95th anniversary in October. The Martins live in Burlingame and have two sons in college, ages 18 and 20. Carl plays trombone in a Latin rock band, and Janet sculpts and does volunteer work.
Carl: We met in fifth grade, in the grammar school orchestra at Lincoln School in Burlingame. I was playing trombone, and Janet played cello at the neighboring school. Her school was too small to have its own orchestra, so four kids would get in a car with the janitor and he would drive them over to Lincoln.
Janet: We started going out when we were 18, after high school. We went out a few years, split up for a few years, got back together. Got married in 1985.
Janet: In 1988, we were living in Monterey. Carl was a painting contractor. My parents desperately needed help so we moved back. We had two little kids. It was like, "We're going to do this, and business is going to grow." In 1994, I became the boss.
Carl: The Hippocratic oath for framers is "accentuate the art and make it reversible." It's about making the art look great. The "reversibility" is about conservation: protecting art from UV rays and acidic materials, using reversible adhesives.
Janet: I love framing. I love taking somebody's little print and making this wonderful piece.
Carl: We ask the client about their home, their design style. With the art we ask, "What do you want to emphasize? The flesh tones? The clear blue of the sky, the lake in the background?" We can change the mood of the art or photograph with the colors of the mat and the frame.
Janet: We have one of the best selections of frames in the Bay Area. Welded steel frames, 22-karat gold museum frames, handmade leather frames from Peru. At the Annex, people can look in our discard bins to find discounted molding and do a picture frame for less money.
Carl: One of our framers is a complete artisan. He will run with an idea further than you would ever imagine. We have a painting, a fantastical landscape, that Janet described to him as "a story unfolding." So he carved an incredible frame in the shape of an open book.
Janet: When we travel, we do picture framing, go to art museums. One year Carl found a small picture-frame-maker in Venice whose father and grandfather had made hand-carved, hand-gilded frames. In the mornings, he would show us how the hand-gilding was done. We've been hit by the recession, but Burlingame is a wonderful area to be in. We have third-generation clients. And we're lucky to be centered between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, the high-tech and biotech industries.
Carl: The bulk of the business is still picture framing. We're evolving more of the art-gallery stuff. Lots of California artists, from landscape painting to contemporary abstract. Sculpture. It's always a challenge choosing the art we show in the gallery. Janet has input, and I have input, and her sister Kristen is gallery manager, so she kind of has the final decision.
Janet: You can't go really, really wild.
Carl: Burlingame is a different market from San Francisco, where the art is youthful and cutting edge. This is the suburbs, and people desire art that exhibits more traditional standards of quality. Our main goal is to make art interesting and accessible to our clients. It's easy to make fun of the art world, because it has so many excesses. So many pieces of art, someone will look at it and say, "Oh, my 5-year-old can do that."
Janet: Or they'll say, "How long did it take the artist to do that?" And I say, "Oh, probably about 40 years."