This piece is an excerpt from our 2025 Fall Digtial Catalog. View the entire catalog for more features like this.
From White House Walls to Your Autumn Mantel
As we head into fall, more of us turn to creative projects at home. Whether that’s baking your favorite pumpkin bread or finally hanging that family photo, Beth Hill, founder of The Mad Framer, is helping people of all backgrounds embrace their inner creative with her fun, beautiful and practical frames.
In her thirty years of framing, Beth has had her frames hanging in some of the most prestigious museums across the country, including The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, The Museum of New Mexico, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Her career began in 1991 at The Old Cambridge Company in Somerville, Massachusetts, a renowned custom framing studio known for preserving fine art in hardwood splined frames.
From there, Beth built her career across other high-end studios like Untitled Fine Art Service in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wholesale workshops and direct-to-consumer shops like Framerama in San Francisco. Her work even extended to a team project that earned a place in the White House private residence during the second Bush administration.
Investing in Your Local Framer
The Mad Framer merges the niche and often inaccessible fine art world with the needs of everyday consumers—bringing something entirely new to the market.
Her line of Ready Mad Frames anchor her decades-long practice of handmade craftsmanship, so you can frame your art, your children’s drawings, family photos, postcards and more. “We frame precious memories. So why put them in disposable, cheap frames? If something matters, it deserves a proper home.”
Handmade, high-quality frames are more expensive because they’re built to last and elevate your pictures and art in an instant. “We don’t care about your art,” Beth jokes. “Not because we’re cynical, but because a good frame helps almost anything read better on the wall, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ it is.”
A high-quality frame is an investment piece. Frame materials are costly, especially when built from local hardwoods, and the labor that goes into each piece reflects decades of experience. “Even when a local frame shop buys molding from overseas,” Beth notes, “you’re still employing people in your community, which is very important.”
Factory-made frames are cut using CNC (Computer Numerical Control) routers, mills, or lathes. This results in a standardized, uniform product that’s great for batch production, but lacks the character and personality of a hand-cut piece. Buying handmade means you’re investing in something unique that can’t be mass-produced.
What’s Coming
This season, Beth is introducing a variety of frames for everyday needs. Each order will include a printed instruction sheet to guide you through easy assembly, and coming soon, there will be how-to videos to follow along. Every frame also comes with a small screwdriver for convenience.
Stay tuned as The Mad Framer line expands to include Floater Frames and Artist Panels, both currently in their final stages of refinement.
