Picture This

Helrick’s custom-framing shop delivers generational expertise and personal service—even for lobster claws.

The old paper flyer announcing a schedule of Dover Twilight League baseball games was probably once nailed to a light pole or taped to a window.

Whatever it took to draw a crowd to St. Mary’s Field in Wharton. After a few days, it was likely to be wet, dirty, and torn.

But on the wall at Helrick’s custom-framing company, with a hint of black mat against a white background in a simple black frame, the old announcement is a work of art.

And a connection to the past.

“This is a place of memories,” says owner Marty Kane, who bought the Dover frame shop in 2019 from Peter Harris, the grandson of Aaron Scheyer, one of the founders.

That’s the thing about the items that Helrick’s frames: They capture a moment in time, preserve a shared creative activity, and memorialize a historic family keepsake. They matter to someone.

Even if it was a hollowed-out lobster claw.

“We had a family who wanted a lobster claw framed for each child,” says employee Anne King.

A COMPLEX HISTORY

Helrick’s is the successor of Reliance Picture Frame Co., which was founded in Manhattan in 1903. In 1937, Reliance moved to its West Clinton Street location. At its peak, Harris says, Reliance was shipping 50,000 frames and framed pictures a day. The company produced specialty frames for individual customers and a range of premade frames for large retail outlets like Woolworth’s, Kresge’s, and Ben Franklin. 

According to company documents from 1965, Reliance was one of the world's largest framing companies. In 1963, they opened Helrick’s, a retail store that merged the names of Harris’ mother, Helen, and his stepfather, Rick. 

Nearly 40 years later, Harris was quoted in a 2002 newspaper article, saying the company produced 250 different frame styles. Harris said two factors changed the framing industry:

• In the 1970s, U.S. framing manufacturers, like many other industries, began to migrate overseas.

• The growth of national arts-and-crafts companies changed the retail market.

Harris sold Reliance in 1976 to Condecor Inc., a company owned by one of his great-uncles, whom he identifies only as a brother of Aaron Scheyer. Reliance moved its operations to Chicago in 1990.

But Helrick’s remained as part of the 110,000-square-foot complex. Today, Helrick’s delivers stock and custom frames for longtime and new customers, corporate clients, and online retailers, all while still offering the same personal expert service from its experienced staff. Business website Rocket Reach estimated Helrick’s 2024 revenue at $3 million.

Ryan Gilififfan is one of those customers. The Roxbury resident, who once rented a unit in the building, bought the property in 2015 as the owner of Dover Business Park, LLC.

It was a natural progression, he said. 

“I’m a carpenter, and I started flipping houses, was a real estate developer,” he says of the site, which currently has 20 units that are utilized by 14 businesses.

If you ask the Helrick’s staff for the secret of its success, it’s their ability to connect with people. Office manager Sandra Caron says they can even thrive with a new industry trend: Download an app, get a photo framed, and shipped right to your doorstep. She says what online customers gain in convenience, they miss out on the personal retail connection that Helrick’s delivers.

“We can frame anything,” Caron says, repeating a slogan posted on the company’s website.

The “we” is the experienced staff of designers, framers, and craftspeople. All but 37-year employee Joanne Stone works part-time.

The team includes Cheryl Stiff, an employee since 1988, and Anne King, who started in 1999.

Caron joined in 1988, left in 2017, and then returned in 2022. Carol Falzarano started in 1979, then left four years later to start a family and work closer to home. She also came back in 2022. Tim Maher is the newest member of the team, joining for the first time in 2022.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH

In the shop on an October day, customers Laurel Culbertson of Mendham and Vicki Burke of Netcong enjoyed working with the staff.

It was Burke’s first visit to Helrick’s. She presented two items for framing, created by her late artist sister. One, a colorful collection of small cross-stitch butterflies, and the other, hand-drawn calligraphy on onionskin paper.

Burke and King examined choices for the frames, matting, and display of the items.

Burke says she was drawn to Helrick’s because of its reputation for excellent work.

Culbertson is an artist who has had 25 items framed by Helrick’s in the past three years, including an Italian-inspired mosaic she dropped off in October. The largest piece they framed for her was 20 inches by 4 feet.

“Their work is precise,” she says. “The measurements are exact.”

Culbertson worked with the Helrick’s team to frame her own paintings, needlework, and mosaics. She is considering framing a World War II Bronze Star awarded to a family member.

She is most appreciative of how flexible the staff has been to meet her needs.

“I do many Cape Cods, watercolors, abstracts, and contemporary works, so their frame selection has changed as my art has changed,” she says.

Placing things in frames is a big business. In 2023, worldwide picture frame sales topped $9.33 billion. In the United States that year, sales topped $4 billion. By 2033, sales are projected to reach $5.7 billion. Rentech Digital, a business data collection site, estimates there are 15,565 picture-framing operations in the United States, 8,686 of which are single-owner shops. The remaining 6,877 others are branch stores of large corporations.

“I’m proud of our company,” Harris says of Helrick’s.

Helrick’s has a glorious past. But, Kane says, it was facing a troubling future. Helrick’s sublets its space at 158 West Clinton Street from Creative Picture Framing, an online direct-to-customer frame company.

Through September and October, Kane says, he was not able to secure a new lease. The future of Helrick’s was vulnerable, and a move—or closure—was a real possibility.

By November 10, the shop's future had changed.

Kane says he reached a “tentative agreement with the building owner to maintain the shop in the space we use,“ which is owned by Dover Business Park, LLC.

The change will include downsizing, combining the storage area with the production area on one floor, a move that will require some construction.

Gilfillan says he is pleased with the new arrangements. He says he was facing a situation where the holder of Helrick’s was planning to downsize its operation. Without action, Gilfillan notes, he could have been facing the entire space becoming empty.

A CLIENT TAKES CHARGE

Kane’s interest in Helrick’s predates his purchase of the company.

As the president of the Lake Hopatcong Historical Society, he has relied on Helrick’s to frame many of the hundreds of historical photos on display at the museum.

He says it was during a 2019 discussion with then-owner Harris about photo framing that he decided to buy the company.

“I went to discuss picture framing and ended up buying a company that was going out of business. And now I own a company that I’m trying to keep from going out of business,” Kane says.

To stand in the lobby at Helrick’s is to feel the weight of the history, the attachments of people to the framed art and photos.

The building itself is part of a complex once attached to the Ulster Iron Works, the hulking engine of Dover’s economy for decades.

Kane says it was that strong economy that brought his ancestors to Dover. He lived in Dover for 19 years, so the future of Helrick’s is personal to him.

As it is for the staff, whose years of devoting their skills to customize frames are seen on the lobby walls. It’s featured in the framed panorama of Blackwell Street, alongside the multi-colored frame of the classic Woodstock poster. It’s in a panel displaying military honors and in the fun of a signed sports jersey or high school banner.

Hopefully, it will be there for the following conversation with a customer who asks, “Can this be framed?” Or for an artist viewing their framed work with satisfaction. Or one more photo of Picatinny Arsenal, a retired bank president, another newly discovered shot of Bertrand Island. Or a new painting of a New Jersey farm, mountain, or beach. Or that old photo of an unsmiling grandfather in a black suit with a stiff collar, a voice calling from the past.

The connections to those things and all of those emotions and bits of life that Helrick’s makes possible are why Kane says he was “trying not to close.”

Instead, he says, “This is the first major change in the shop in years. For our customers, it will look like a refresh of the shop.”

 It will refresh the shop’s appearance, but the commitment to preserving its customers’ memories won’t change because that is personal for the staff, too.

Especially a hollowed-out lobster claw.