The California quail is our state bird. The California poppy is our state flower. Seattle artist Molly Hashimoto put both in the same print and somehow you can tell right away she had been walking the hills here her a good part of her life.
Hashimoto has been painting and printing the natural world of the American West for over 30 years, and her work has a quality that is hard to pin down with warmth and detail. This woodblock print came into our Castro frame shop and we took our time with it.
Float mounting a deckled edge print
The first decision with any print on paper is how to mount it, and with a deckled edge print the answer is almost always a float mount. The deckled edge, that soft, irregular border that forms naturally during the papermaking process is part of what makes a fine art print feel like an object rather than just an image. Covering it up with a mat would be like framing a painting and hiding half of it.
Float mounting suspends the print slightly above the mat board so the full edge of the paper is visible on all sides. We use hand-made Japanese hinges for this, cut from washi and adhered with wheat starch paste, fully reversible and gentle on the paper. The print sits forward, with a shadow line around it that gives the whole piece a quiet depth.
Choosing the frame
With Hashimoto’s print the framing brief was clear: stay out of the way of the color. The quail, the poppies, the warm California light in the illustration. The framing needed to support all of that without competing with it.
We chose a clear maple frame with a light natural grain and a contemporary profile. Maple has a warmth to it that works well with the earthy tones in the print without pulling the eye away from the image. The overall feel is light, natural and modern, which is exactly what this print needed around it.
Why this print belongs on a San Francisco wall
We frame a lot of California subject matter in this shop, and there is something that feels right about putting Hashimoto’s work in front of a San Francisco audience. The quail shows up in Golden Gate Park. The poppies line the hills up and down the peninsula every spring. This is not an abstract California – it is the California people who live here actually see and feel connected to.
That connection is worth framing properly. A print like this, mounted and glazed correctly, will hold its color and its character for decades. That is the whole point of bringing something to a frame shop rather than just picking up a frame off a shelf.
Bring in your prints
Woodblock prints, giclées, lithographs, watercolors, photographs – if it is on paper and you want it framed properly, we know how to do it. We are a small shop in the Castro and we have been doing this for over 40 years. Come in and let’s look at it together.
📍 Visit our Castro frame shop
📞 Call us
📧 Email us your artwork
💻 Request a quote on our website