They All Went to Jean's

by Deborah C. Pollack

Jean’s Framing Shop, ca. 1959, at 309A South County Road, Palm Beach. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

From 1954 to 1989, Anna Jean Howe owned a popular frame shop, first in Palm Beach on South County Road, and later in West Palm Beach on South Dixie Highway. She saved an extensive archive of her successful career, mainly stored in five thick scrapbooks that now belong to the author.

Born in 1924 in West Palm Beach to a native Floridian, Anna Jean Woesner lived on Gardenia Street and attended the city’s Palm Beach High School before she wed Palmlee Howe in 1954. After working as a designer

in a Palm Beach flower shop, Jean partnered with Richard Braido to open the Jean and Dick Framing Shop at 309-A South County Road the year she married. Celebrities of the 1950s, including Hollywood singer/ actress and part-time Florida resident Frances Langford, and Palm Beach’s favorite cartoonist, Zito, patronized the store and gave Jean and Dick their best wishes on autographed photos.

Due to a business disagreement with Dick Braido, in 1959 Jean Howe formed her own company at the same South County Road

Pearl working at Jean’s Framing Shop, Palm Beach, 1966. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack

location, renaming it Jean’s Framing Shop. She tried to erase Dick’s name from inscribed celebrity photos, but when Braido died in 1992, Jean saved a clipping of his funeral announcement in one of her scrapbooks.

Jean cared deeply about Palm Beach and its history, and supported the Palm Beach Police Department, the American Legion, the Heart Association of Palm Beach County, and local fire fighters’ organizations (her husband, Palmlee, was a firefighter and EMT).

With help from Palmlee and others, Jean made her shop into one of the most respected and beloved places in town. A woman named Pearl began working for her in the 1950s and doubled as babysitter for

In for framing at Jean’s shop, a portrait by Kyril Vassilev of Harry S. Truman giving a speech. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

Jean’s son, Albert, when the family lived in Lake Worth.

Jean framed just about anything, including modern masters, miniature paintings (like those sold at Tanya Brooks’ Galerie Montmarte), medals, porcelain plaques, dolls, jewelry, clothing, room panels, and even a life-sized portrait of Harry Truman, painted in 1949 by Kyril Vassilev at the Winter White House in Key West. She handled the limited-edition prints of several wildlife artists and framed art by noted Florida landscapist A. E. Backus. Jean kept articles about Backus, as well as the group of African American artists known as the Highwaymen, who copied his paintings.

Throughout the years, Jean posed with Palm

Beach socialites for the shop’s advertisements in local publications. Many of these women, as well as other society leaders, became Jean’s customers and friends. They included Margo Crawford, Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway, Dorothy Bateman, Diana “Dysie” Davie, Judith Schrafft, and Victoria van Gerbig (daughter of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.).

Aside from significant society women, during the 1960s and ‘70s, celebrities expressed their affection for Jean, such as actor Burt Reynolds in the lovingly inscribed photograph left. Fashion designer/ photographer/painter Cecil Beaton expressed his gratitude to Jean in an article he sent her in 1968 and on a photograph in 1970, when he was in town for a Palm Beach Galleries show.

A colorful palette of Palm Beach artists also worked with Jean and became her friends. This vibrant group included Paul Crosthwaite and his longtime partner, John Sharp; Henry Strater; James DeVries; Zoe Shippen; Patricia Massie; Nicola Simbari; Franci Young; George Headley; Jack Gray; Ricardo Magni; Keith Ingermann; Piero Aversa; Channing Hare; Hopkins “Stevie” Hensel, who called Jean “an artist’s best pal”; Charles Bosseron Chambers; Lorraine Trester; Charles Baskerville; Janet Folsom;

Burt Reynolds, inscribed, “To Jean, Love you babe, Burt Reynolds,” photographer unknown. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

Jean Howe at her Palm Beach shop during an opening reception, 1950s. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

Whitney Cushing; John “Jack” Hawkins; Eric Lundgren; Mercedes Marquez; Leonard Lane; Ouida George; Patrick Archer; and Palm Beach’s most popular painter, Orville Bulman. Bulman for the most part selected his frames from the prestigious House of Heydenryk in New York City, but he had Jean frame his works locally. Howe also framed works on paper by Ann Weaver Norton, the benefactor of Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, who became the second wife of Ralph Norton, founder of Norton Gallery and School of Art, the year after his first wife and co-founder, Elizabeth, died.

Jean sent her friend and New York/Palm Beach artist Gertrude Schweitzer a bouquet of sweetheart roses for Schweitzer’s 1966 opening at the Norton Gallery and School of Art, prompting the painter to write, “I knew nothing about its arrival at the gallery until I got a note on Sat. morning from Mr. Hunter’s [Norton director E. Robert Hunter] secy. So I immediately drove over— picked them up & brought them home.” Dudley Huppler, a friend of Andy Warhol’s, exhibited in Palm Beach for several years and sent Jean a series of surrealistic “owl in tree” prints in gratitude for what he deemed her cherished kindness.

Artists Piero Aversa and Keith Ingermann sent Jean more photographs, cards, catalogues, and letters than any

New Year’s card to Jean from Piero Aversa picturing Aversa with his work. Left: “If you hurry through long days you will hurry through short years.” Right: “Zut! Another falling year, thanks for the framing!” Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

Margo Crawford (Mrs. Edward W.) with Jean from Annette Krauss Rose, inscribed to Jean, “Affectionately, an advertisement for the shop. Photograph by John Annette,” photographer unknown. Courtesy Anna Jean Haynsworth. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack. of Edward and Deborah Pollack. other correspondent. Some of Aversa’s Ingermann, who also made his own frames, affectionate letters began “Darling Jean” gave Jean a 1948 watercolor he painted of and ended “love as always, Piero.” One Palm Beach’s St. Edward Church. He wrote emphasized that “the paintings with your from Africa in 1968, “Dear Jean and Palmlee, I frames look wonderful.” am out here on a months safari in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and it is really too wonderful. On November 29, 1968, Aversa wrote from The scenery is fantastic and everywhere there London on Claridge’s stationery: are animals to paint. Best wishes to everyone.” Then, a couple of years later from Udaipur, Jean ‘dearest’ “Greetings from this eastern paradise. It is Don’t worry I am not staying in this hotel! It is really too lovely and my head is filled with ideas the most expensive in the world! But even the for painting. I am staying with the H. H. the best—had only lunch (invited!) I hope all and Maharana and palace life is definitely for me!” everybody and everything is well with you. I think of you more intensely. It’s the beginning of Jean’s clients, including important Palm a new season, Xmas, new year, etc. I shall miss Beach art dealers, often commented on you very much. Because I really don’t know what her flawless framing style. The number of is my future. galleries in Palm Beach exploded in the Love, love, love— 1960s and ‘70s. Among those that relied Piero. on her fine eye were the Worth Avenue Gallery, owned and directed by Jean’s good

Christmas greeting to Jean from animal lover Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway (1901-1976) inscibed, 'The Great White Hunter Again sends love and wishes you a Merry Christmas." Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

friend Mary Duggett Benson; Palm Beach Galleries, directed by George Vigouroux; Wally Findlay Galleries; Thieme Galleries; and Galerie Juarez. Vigouroux wrote in 1966, “What taste and ability you have.”

Gallery owner James “Jimmy” Hunt Barker also used Jean’s services and liked her very much. He sent her magazine articles and Christmas cards, one that included a new litter of his Cavalier King Charles spaniels. A greeting at New Year’s read “All good wishes to Jean from the ‘Barkers’ and Jimmy, Jan. 3, ‘74.”

Interior designers who utilized Jean’s services included David and Alyce Jeanne Marks (Carriage House Interiors), Harriet Cole, Anne Lanfranchi, Anne Wrigley, John

Volk family Christmas greetings sent to Jean and Palmlee Howe, ca. 1963. Courtesy Anna Jean Howe Archives, collection of Edward and Deborah Pollack.

Witman, David Ayres, and the firm Worrell’s. Designer/artist Philip Hulitar was a valued client, as was artist Annette Krauss Rose, wife of dentist/sculptor Dr. Steven Rose. (The Roses lived at Annette’s family estate, Palm Beach’s Villa dei Fiori, a 1921 mansion Addison Mizner designed for Jell-O owner Orator Frank Woodward.) Famed Palm Beach architect John Volk and wife, Jane, were friendly with Jean as well and sent her Christmas greetings.

Due to a hefty rent increase, in 1980–1981 Jean moved her frame shop from Palm Beach to West Palm Beach’s Valley Forge Center at 6015 South Dixie Highway. She continued to provide fine framing and receive affectionate greetings from customers.

In November 1989, Jean closed her shop after three and a half decades. Her retirement announcement, which prompted cards and letters to pour in, read:

For thirty-five years we have enjoyed working with our customers from the Palm Beaches and beyond. It has been a fascinating experience being a part of the rapid growth of our area and the equally rapid expansion in the world of art.

To be a part of all this activity has been a rewarding experience. Many friends have been made, pleasures and sorrows have been shared.

Now the time has come to retire so November 30, 1989, will mark the close of business for Jean’s Framing Shop. Thank you for the pleasure of serving you. Your patronage made the shop a success through the years.

We wish you well. Peace be with you.

Anna Jean Howe epitomized the kind of friendly neighborhood business owner people think of now and again with nostalgia. With an artful eye for precision and the prime objective of serving her clientele, she gave us one of the many thriving independent shops that have helped make Palm Beach County a great place to live.

About the Author

Deborah C. Pollack, with her husband, Edward, owns a gallery on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. Her books include Visual Art and the Urban Evolution of the New South (University of South Carolina Press); Felix De Crano: Forgotten Artist of the Flagler Colony (Lightner Museum); Palm Beach Visual Arts (Pelican Publishing Company); Bad Scarlett: The Extraordinary Life of the Notorious Southern Beauty Marie Boozer (Peppertree Press);Vintage Miami Beach Glamour: Celebrities & Socialites in the Heyday of Chic (The History Press); Orville Bulman: An Enchanted Life and Fantastic Legacy (Blue Heron Press); and Laura Woodward: The Artist Behind the Innovator Who Developed Palm Beach (Blue Heron Press with the HSPBC). Deborah is a contributor to the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and her other essays, articles, short stories, and poems are widely published.