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As in all construction, whether it be houses or art, starting with a firm foundation is essential to ensuring that your work will survive the test of time. Since 1967, John Annesley and his family have been handcrafting fine art supports, stretcher bars and art panels for many of the world's museums and influential artists. His stretcher bars and panels have been used by museums and restoration experts to retrofit cherished works by Picasso, Cezanne, Monet, Matisse and Van Gogh to name but a few.

Hand Crafted Stretcher Bars and Panels

"As a painter myself, I've learned that as artists we all have similar issues and problems and by being able to talk with artists and art professionals on a daily basis for the past thirty-plus years, I've been able to find solutions to a great many problems facing painters, conservators, and other art professionals. I've learned a lot from my customers--they've helped design all of my products. That's why I'm able to make what are arguably the world's finest art supports. These aren't boilerplate designs, they're finely crafted and honed to meet the most demanding needs of the finest conservators and painters in the world: YOU." - John Annesley

At John Annesley Company we handcraft fine art supports -- traditional wood keyed stretcher bars, expansion bolt stretchers, cradled panels and strainers in a variety of styles. We have standard as well as custom sizes, inclusive of fractional and metric measurements.

New on the John Annesley Site

- Hope you like the new look of the site. The content has been re-designed and re-positioned, but it's all here, plus more. Our webmaster has been hard at work. Early in 2010 we should have a way for you to "design your own art support on-line", find out the price and then place your order on-line.

- We've been stretching lots of giclees on canvas for customers and now we're vacuum mounting new and old paintings too. We've added to the website the prices for some of the standard sizes for this service.

- Now there's even more fabrics we can put on the stretcher bars or panels we make for you. There's a complete line of unprimed linens. It's for those artists that like complete control of the painting substrate by starting with a raw linen.

- Lance has a great array of "how-to" movies about the best stretching technique and how to fold canvas/linen corners. Click Here to visit the MySpace site.

"I have found that one of the big benefits of my job is the opportunity to see how many artists work. There are many differences and many similarities". - John Annesley
There's some artist studio tours on our website that allow all artists to see how and where some artists create their work."

Functional Art Supports

We use only the best materials available and incorporate carefully conceived design to provide strong, functional art supports and sell our stretcher bars as sets with bracing included. If the stretcher bars are small enough to ship to you assembled, we will. If not, we trial assemble each bar set to ensure perfect workmanship and fit, and then disassemble it for shipping. This way we can guarantee every stretcher bar set will be perfect.

The bodies of our stretchers, strainers and panels are made from clear, kiln-dried basswood, a very strong and durable hardwood. It is very stable as compared to other woods used in art support manufacture. Basswood is surprisingly light in weight and provides an excellent tacking edge for the stretching of fabric. It doesn't harden or become brittle with age, unlike many of the woods used for stretcher bars on the market today.

Our attention to detail shows by the way we craft each joint and incorporate well designed bracing. This assures that your work will be safe for the long-term and sit flat against any wall without any twisting, sagging or warping.

Our Art Supports are Beautiful

Our customers are constantly telling us that our art supports are beautiful--the best they have encountered. More than a few have expressed the urge to display our products as works of art in and of themselves. Our customers have found that using high quality materials makes their job easier and their results better, whether they are art conservators, or artists.

We also offer a line of fine European linens and cotton canvas hand stretched on our supports or by the yard. We offer discounts on the professional line of Golden acrylic paints and mediums and Gamblin oil paints and mediums. Our professional art supplies product line is rounded out with custom made floater frames and other framing, as well as our own line of canvas pliers.

Professional Art Supplies

"If you have special design needs, or questions, don't hesitate to contact me. I've been working with people on art related projects most of my life and have a very capable shop and staff. And if I can't help you, I know someone who can, and will gladly refer you. We're here, call or e-mail us." - John Annesley

Happy New Year
from John - - - -

Well it's another new year, they keep popping up like birthdays and old friends. The old year was different, not so great, but not all bad either. Here at John Annesley Company we see the parade from an interesting vantage point. What I heard from my customers was that "Many Galleries" were not selling; were out of business; were not paying on time; etc. (What's new?) Then my customer would still give me a good order. I'd ask, if things were so bad, what's up with the order? Over and over the response I received was that my customer had just gotten a "Commission" and was using that money to stock up on canvas. I asked how they got the commission and almost always the artist received the commission via their website on the internet. So if I see a trend on the horizon it may be - work your websites for commissions.

My Mother used to have cocktail napkins that said "Next year we have to get organized." So that's what we are doing here at John Annesley Company. We've been upgrading and redesigning our website, to troll for new commissions (i.e. Your Orders for Stretchers and Canvas). We are reorganizing our space here on Brandt Road in Healdsburg - redesigning our lumber storage and canvas storage. We've set up a room as "The Art Supply Store". We intend to expand our paint product lines and include Brushes (Isabey and Rafael). We're also adding new services such as mounting. Our Canvas Pliers have done very well, we're too often out-of-stock and have to make more, who would have thought. Last year we started importing raw linen from Belgium, these fabrics have done well, they're much less expensive than our primed linen.

The John Annesley Company has established a connection with the digital printing world. We've seen that digital printing has had phenomenal growth each year - every where you turn, there it is. It made me start thinking about the Grange Movement from the 1800s. It started in England and spread to America. People who made things and grew things could get together to sell their product and purchase materials together - a producers cooperative or co-op. Almost every city and town in America has a Grange building paid for by the locals by paying a small membership fee to the Grange, The farmers sold their crops bought their seed and animal feed ,traded with one another. They sold their arts and crafts. So the idea is of a Digital Grange, The digital Commons, our websites, where we buy and sell our wares, and trade in Life's mysterious pleasures. To bring this into focus is Bill Kane, formerly of Skylark Images, who is the best known and premier digital printer in Northern California. He's teamed up with Joe McDonald, the master photographer and printer for the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor. Joe's been making fine art catalogs for years and also teaches a 16-week digital photography class at Santa Rosa Junior College. He realized he could compress most of this information into two weekends - giving all the info that an artist would need in concise workshops at the studio. The dream comes together at The Digital Grange in Petaluma. Of course, all the art needs to be mounted or stretched and framed, plus supplies are need, so John Annesley Company is helping to fill that need.

And finally, to my customers in this New Year and New World we want to pose a few questions. We all want everything in life to be better, faster and cheaper, but I still want to ask - What can I do for you? How can we improve our products? The answers to these questions can help John Annesley Company and our fine artist customers navigate our way into the New World of the future. So with our head in the clouds, and our hopes high in the air, God Bless everyone and let's make it a good year. - John

p.s. What do you prefer: an online shopping cart - or phoning, talking to a person and placing your order by phone with the opportunity to ask questions and discuss your issues? For instance, we sell our canvas pliers online with the PayPal shopping cart. This seems to be working pretty well. It's convenient and easy. We check our email in the morning, process the orders and ship them out. The payment is secured before we ship. But we don't know those customers and I like to know who we serve. We get almost no feedback and it seems we loose the opportunity to offer our other products and to establish a relationship, both at our expense.

Many of our regular customers place their orders via email. This is convenient, provides a written record, and we can confirm by email. Via email we send price quotes, shipping quotes and arrange for alternate payment, like paying by check or electronic funds transfer. The majority of our customers are repeat customers. Individuals who we have been happy to serve over the years. They in turn refer their friends and colleagues. We've grown by word of mouth, that's the best advertising, almost our only advertising. We need your help to survive so we go out of our way to please you.

We thank you for your support. We are strongly considering offering more of our products through an online shopping cart. Please let us know your preference and thoughts about these carts.

"Ask John"

You're encouraged to e-mail John with your questions - every couple weeks we'll post some of the questions and answers. Some of the past questions John has answered can be be read on the site's FAQs page.