Puzzling, at first, to learn that Allison Sales Co., the long-established floor covering company, would add an art framing service. But the pieces drop in place perfectly.
Craftsmanship is the connection.
Since 1925, the family-owned company’s strength has been reliance on expert skills and high-quality materials. Originally, the company dealt in hardwood lumber. For almost the last quarter-century, the Allisons have specialized in tile, vinyl floor coverings and carpet, serving modern market trends in home and commercial installation.
A through-line is custom installation with expert skills, which led to a focus on full bathroom installations of tile, countertops and on-trend, frameless glass shower enclosures and doors.
Baths often include the need for creating framed mirrors in a myriad of stocks, from wood to metal, ornate to modern.
All those materials require precision cutting, measuring and specific installation techniques.
Father and son Vince and Chase Allison saw custom art framing as a natural fit with all their other interior design and fabrication capabilities. While decorating new homes or renovating exiting ones, clients of their many services can also have expert help displaying their personal artworks, photographs and treasures.
And clients can certainly surprise framers. One of the new frame shop’s first challenges was to mount a full alligator hide! The staff was ready.
Lead framer Kevin Weakley, with more than a decade of experience with Hobby Lobby, has seen and conquered a wild variety of objects, images and art. He recently created an enclosure for three child-sized, pastel, sun-faded beach caps. It instantly generates sentimental beach dreams.
Objects, art and images that people choose to frame are intensely personal and cherished, which the staff members genuinely understand.
On display in the store is a shadowbox of the U.S. Navy uniform buttons, pins and other memorabilia that belonged to owner Vincent Allison’s father, Vincent Allison Sr. To any family, such a display is priceless. It bolsters customer confidence to know their treasured possessions are cared by skilled staff here in our hometown area.
Frame shop staff Kirsten Cutsinger and Amanda Wilson both formerly assisted customers at Bedford Camera & Video.
Wilson is experienced in light photographic restoration and enhancement, using digital software to clean up damage, balance lighting and make images look their best.
Cutsinger consults with clients to make choices of mats, frames and framing styles. She also has her hands into fabricating frames and the prints-on-canvas that the store’s large-format printer can create. Both color and black-and-white images can be transferred to art-quality canvas, wrapped on frame or in a frame.
The shop’s large-format printer can reproduce an image at high resolution as large as 44 inches by almost any length.
With almost infinite colors, frame styles and artistic considerations, custom framing really is similar to the interior design and installation decisions clients make about flooring and tile.
Art framing, then, is a fit with Allisons Sales Co.’s trusted capabilities and the high standards of this almost century-old business.
Allison Sales Co. Framing Shop 7101 U.S. 271 South Fort Smith, Ark. 479-649-9989
