Verona businesses have celebrated one-year anniversaries, five-year anniversaries, 20-year anniversaries, and 30-year anniversaries. MyVeronaNJ has covered only one 50th anniversary–but next weekend, it will be two.
On Saturday, June 1, Artist Frame Gallery will celebrate 50 years in Verona. The business was started by Stanley Stark in the center of town in 1969, and he later moved it to 756 Bloomfield Avenue. Tena Mancini bought the business from Stark’s son in 2003 and, in the fall of 2016, moved it to its current location in the Flatiron Building at 744 Bloomfield Avenue.
Since taking over, Mancini has expanded the framing options at the business, while creating new opportunities for it in interior design. She’s added leather and acrylic frames to the shop’s many wood frame offerings, and now creates custom mirrors too. Mancini, a graduate of New York School of Interior Design, also offers art installation services and helps residential and business clients to find art to complete a room.
“I have an interior design background so I bring to the business a different level of framing,” Mancini says. “When it comes to designing a period piece, I will know what to put on it. It helps me to be above the average framer.”
There will be a 50th anniversary ribbon cutting at Artist Frame Gallery on Saturday, June 1, at 2 p.m., and the public is invited to attend.
