By Sharon Verbeten
Door County is a well-established haven for artisans. And after working for a decade with the Artist Guild in Sturgeon Bay, Janine Buechner has taken her talents and launched Blue Moon Framery. From her location in an old bank building in downtown Sturgeon Bay, Buechner uses
an actual bank vault to store the works people entrust to her.
“My first love is art,” says Buechner, who has worked in a wide variety of disciplines and specializes in linoleum and wood-block prints.
Buechner is a Master Certified Picture Framer — a title given to fewer than 100 in the world. “I have a really large knowledge base of materials and preservation qualities,” she says.
With those skills, she provides museum-quality framing for art and treasured artifacts — everything from paintings and letters to record albums, vintage toys and personal memorabilia. A peek into the gallery on her website reveals the distinctive ways such items can be preserved — including custom frames and shadowboxes.
“Framing is meant to enhance your piece,” says Buechner, who when communicating with the customer likes to ask: “How are we going to make this treasure of yours last as long as possible?”
And while some consider framing a luxury, Buechner said her first few months in her one-woman shop — she launched in fall 2021 — have been busy. “The picture framing industry is just nuts right now,” she says, noting that during the pandemic, people were stuck inside, looking, perhaps more critically, at their surroundings.
Today’s younger generation may not be fond of hard-copy photos (“I do worry a little bit about the future,” Buechner admits), but there are plenty of people who still cherish memories.
“As they get older, people start to get more sentimental about things,” Buechner says. “What I am seeing is older generations wanting to preserve their things so they can hand them down.”
