galleriascola-duplicate-20250409

Beatles

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 19:32:33 GMT

Beatles By avedon

I had a client come in last month with these amazing prints. He is a huge Beatles fan and this was a great score for him to get the full set.

In 1967, Beatles Manager Brian Epstein commissioned fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon to shoot the band members and design a set of posters that would visually capture the new psychedelic direction of the Beatle’s music. Avedon took a number of shots of the group on August 11, 1967, four of which were later adorned with psychedelic effects. Avedon overlaid the solarized prints with Day-Glo colors and symbolic attributes; Ringo's white peace dove, George's mystical henna patterns, Paul's flower power, and John's trippy eyeglasses. They were first published in the January 9, 1968 edition of the Look Magazine in the U.S. and were subsequently sold as posters.

Wanting to keep with the feel of the Psychedelic Era, I chose to put them in frames representing the psychedelic time by using the company Spark and their hand made frames. Below is the images of the original black and white photos Avedon took as an inspiration for the psychedelic ones.

“The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 18:57:20 GMT

“The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”

I had one of our very good clients come in with this gem. She found it in a drawer while cleaning out her mother's house.

She believed it was either from her grandparents or was picked up by her parents on their travels.

This is a complete calendar of The Rubaiyat by Omar Kahayyam, with beautiful illustrations and poems for each month of the year, tied together with string in a brown and gold cover from 1917.

“The Rubaiyat” was first published in March 1859. In this edition, the illustrations were done by Ethel Davis Seal (1885-1965), also known for illustrations of interiors of homes and home decor in publications such as Ladies Home Journal in the early teens into the late 1920's.

We designed it to be 4 framed pieces. The first frame shows the cover and title page with the following three each displaying four months. Each page has different illustrations yet it flows beautifully together as a set, using harmonious designs and colors. We floated the pages on Acid free black matting, using museum glass and spacers and finished it with a 23k gold closed corner frame.

Fillmore Concert Poster

lisa@galleriascola.com (Lisa Galli) — Sat, 24 May 2025 20:52:49 GMT

Rick Griffin Concert Poster for the Fillmore

Collecting rock posters is a hobby I share with many music and art fans, some of whom are our clients. Rick Griffin was one of the first artists to illustrate concert posters for two now famous concert venues, Bill Graham’s Fillmore and Chet Helms Family Dog. Both places featured the eye-catching Psychedelic illustrations of Rick Griffin to advertise their performances.

I have a client who is an avid collector of original Bill Graham posters from the 1960's and 1970's. When he acquires a new piece, he drops it of and asks me to design a framing that I think will look good.

This 1968 example of Rick’s work features the groups: It's a beautiful Day and Deep Purple. The checkerboard background really jumped out at me. To further accent the design, I hand painted yellow and black segments on the extra thick matboard that surrounds the poster. I chose a plain matt black wooden frame to keep our attention on the vibrating black and yellow.

Jane Trask Rosen Restoration Project

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:53:31 GMT

A GALLERIA SCOLA CLIENT STORY

When I was a child, a weathered old document always hung somewhere, in a hall or the corner of a room in whatever house we were in. I never knew what it was, but was always intrigued by the elaborate decorations that wound their way around the script in the center. Small empty wooden rowboats, tall masted ships, winged cherubs playing trumpets, a strange recumbent lion with an agonized woman’s face, a proud explorer with his boot on some sort of fallen shield and planting an enormous billowing flag, dark clouds and lightning flashes, all surrounded lines of spidery old-fashioned writing. It seemed to be a certificate of some sort, honoring someone named Henry Bicker, whose name was inscribed in the center. His name was all I could make out; I couldn’t read any of the rest of it, as the letters were strange and illegible and included words like whereof and hereunto. All I knew was that Henry Bicker (the one word I could read) was someone important to me, as my middle name was Bicker. But why I had that name, I didn’t know.

When I was older, I learned from my father what the document was: a certificate stating that Henry Bicker was a member of the Society of Cincinnati, a group composed of officers who were members of George Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War. The document was signed by George Washington, as well as by Henry Knox, Secretary of the Treasury, and was dated October 1, 1785. My father told me that Henry Bicker was a direct ancestor of his, and that his wife was Jane Bicker, after whom I was named.

The society took its name from the Roman hero Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a farmer who left his plow in the middle of the field to become the leader of a successful military campaign. When the fighting was over he returned to his plow and went back to farming. He was believed to represent an ideal of the citizen-soldier. In recognition of this, The Society of Cincinnati claims to be founded “to preserve the ideals of fellowship of the officers of the Continental Army who served in the Revolutionary War.” Membership is expected to pass down through the generations, from oldest son to oldest son. It is the oldest hereditary society in the United States.

In my family, it turned out that there were no sons at all in the generations that followed Henry Bicker, so the document was passed from oldest daughter to oldest daughter, finally coming to my father sometime in the 1930’s. My father told me that an uncle of his, who wanted the document himself, had spent considerable effort and money trying to establish his right to membership in the Society. However, the governors of the Society had not accepted his credentials, so the document remained on the walls of my parents’ house. After my father’s death, my three siblings decided that the document should come to me, as I bear the name of Jane Bicker, Henry Bicker’s wife.

The document moved with me from Connecticut to Massachusetts and eventually to California, where it hung on a dark wall, to protect it from fading in the western sun. However, one day in May 2019, I noticed that its frame was chipped and cracked and needed obvious repair. I took it to Galleria Scola in Oakland, originally only for repair to the frame. Elida Scola recognized the historical value of the document and offered not only to repair the frame but to have the document cleaned in order to preserve it. I was glad to leave it in her capable hands. A few weeks later, I picked it up: a document clear of years of dust and dirt, the writing legible, in a remade frame, and covered in non-reflective glass. It is a treasure. I will always be grateful to Elida Scola and her gallery for their expertise in repair and restoration.

Tangier Storyteller

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 21:34:27 GMT

100 year old watercolor framing restoration project

This is a very interesting piece of artwork. it’s a watercolor on paper that was done about 100 years ago of a Tangiers storyteller just had a very old acidic mat on it and we decided to take it off in preparation for the new framing. More will be revealed later.

Framing an American Flag Poster from 1942

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 01:00:39 GMT

"GIVE IT YOUR BEST!"

This beautiful 1942 American flag poster is a stone lithograph print backed with linen to preserve its fragile paper stock. It was created as propaganda for World War II. We framed it in a black over red step back profile frame rubbed and polished to reveal traces of red.

Gold Bodhi Leaves Frame Project

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 21:39:53 GMT

A Hand Gilded Frame Preserving Treasures from Indonesia

These gilded leaves from the Bodhi tree are set a top lacquer pillows. They are suspended on iridescent silk and surrounded by a hand gilded frame. These small treasures from a trip to Indonesia become a daily reminder of the enlightenment of Buddha under the Bodhi tree.