Gesso & Bole

Custom Frames. No Middlemen. Just Craftsmanship.

Your artwork deserves a frame made with the same care and intention.

We design and build handmade hardwood frames from locally sourced wood — crafted entirely in-house from start to finish.

How regular frame stores work:

Overseas moulding manufacturer → Importer → Frame wholesaler → Purchases frames already assembled (often shipped in 💰⬆️) and resells to customer

How we work:

Purchase raw hardwood in bulk from local Canadian supplier → We mill, cut, join, sand, finish and fit all in house and sell direct to customer

Because we do everything ourselves, we deliver:

Museum-level quality - Highest quality archival materials

Fully custom designs - custom mouldings in any wood, shape or design with custom finishes, joinery and colours

Competitive pricing by cutting out moulding middlemen

Sustainably sourced local hardwoods as well as exotic woods

We also offer budget-friendly custom frame packages in:

Simple Black

Clean White

Solid Maple

These streamlined profiles with transparent pricing are up to 50% more affordable than traditional custom framing — making professional framing accessible for emerging artists, collectors, and exhibition prep.

Need more options?
We also offer a curated selection of factory-finished mouldings from leading moulding suppliers, along with in-house mounting and laminating to a variety of substrates using the highest quality materials as well as custom mat cutting in any shape on our computerized mat cutter — ensuring complete control over quality from start to finish. We also offer archival treatment to all artworks as standard, using reversible adhesives and acid free materials as recommended by the Canadian Conservation Institute

Built for artists. Trusted by collectors, galleries and private and government institutions.

And when your project calls for something truly unique, our studio also offers:

3D Printing

CNC Routing

Laser Cutting

From exhibition-ready framing to one-of-a-kind creative builds — we combine traditional craftsmanship with modern tools to bring your vision to life.

Handmade locally in Ottawa. Designed for your art.

Finally got a chance to head down to city hall to see Hold True: 2025 Additions to the City of Ottawa Art Collection

Some beautiful new artwork (and frame 😉) acquisitions from the City’s Direct Purchase Program. On view in the City Hall Art Galley until March 29th.

Handmade rounded corner roasted maple from for this print.

Happy New Year! 🎉

Thank you for an amazing 2025 and for trusting us with your custom framing projects all year long. Your artwork, memories, and treasured pieces are the heart of what we do, and it means so much that you chose our shop to help showcase them. Take a look at some of our favourite and most custom projects from this year!
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As we look ahead to 2026, we’d love your feedback:

How can we improve our service to make your experience easier, smoother, or more enjoyable?

Are there any additional products or services you’d like to see from us?

Please share your thoughts in the comments or send us a message—your ideas help shape what we do next. Wishing you a happy, healthy, and creative 2026!

The final project completed before we closed for the holidays. We will be back open January 5th 2026.

Thanks for all the business this year, it has been incredibly busy and we are super grateful!

This project has been in the works for some time but we got there. A custom engraved and painted frame for these uncut Hro cards. Finished with museum glass and black museum matting.

Come by the workshop any day next week (December 15th - 19th) to take advantage of our custom mat sale!

We are offering all custom mats made from our smaller conservation and museum matboard remnants for $7 +HST with up to 4 windows!

We have lots of colours available and pieces up to around 16”x20”. (Mats that require full sheets would be charged at regular price)

Spread the word!

Custom record shelves made from solid walnut

When you buy frames from us at Gesso & Bole, you can be assured that you are buying the best quality product possible at the most reasonable price. We complete all work in house on our various specialized machinery as well as mill custom mouldings (we also offer prefinished moulding options from large frame suppliers that we cut and join to order). Since we manufacture everything in house and do not outsource, we can keep production costs lower while maintaining the highest work standards.

We haven’t been posting much on here lately. Life and work has been very busy and as an owner operated business, I haven’t had much time for social media. Just wanted to share a few quick updates

We are now accepting in person credit card payments on all new orders! Existing customers can continue to pay using E-transfer, cash or cheque if preferred and all pricing will stay the same as previous orders.

We also will be opening a pre-order for limited run of our adjustable wall easels in the next couple of months. These will be made from solid maple and Baltic birch and can be ordered in any length. If you will require shipping, longer easels will be shipped in pieces around 44” long that can be easily assembled on the wall. The pre order should be live in the next couple of months.

Finally, we have lots of new samples in store from national frame suppliers such as Roma, Larson-Juhl, Omega, Fotiou and more. You have the option of choosing from thousands of profiles from these vendors or custom milled profiles from locally sourced hardwoods that we mill and finish in house. We have added a new moulding machine to our workshop that can produce custom frame profiles in almost any design.

Often when I suggest using acrylic (plexiglass) in place of glass I usually get some pushback. Acrylic is often the better choice for large pieces or ones that a shatter resistant glazing is required. It’s important to know that not all plastic glazing is created equal and there are two main types used in picture framing. We exclusively use picture frame grade acrylic and stock several variants and thicknesses. Inexpensive off the shelf frames generally use a completely different material called Styrene. Styrene is more cost effective, but is of much lower quality in terms of clarity, durability and rigidity than acrylic. Swipe to see a comparison of the material thickness in the second image and well as a (very unscientific) scratch comparison of both products.

We are testing out a new wood finish that cures in seconds with UV light. In the process we noticed that some boards around the workshop fluoresced and some did not when exposed to the 395nm light. Optical brightening agents (OBA) are used in some products and cause the products containing these to glow. You can see clear which matboard sample contains OBA’s in the images. We also tested UV filtering glass vs regular to see the UV filtering in action.