19th Century Frame and Mat Design

Gina Hurst

Grumbler
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Posts
21
Loc
AL
Hello All!

I have a client that would like to frame the pages of an 1876 patriotic "Yankee Doodle" childerns book. What was the style of frame and mat design of that period? He would like to keep the framing design historically correct. Also, were the mats larger on the top and bottom?

Thanks for all your help, Gina Hurst
www.MeridianArts.com
 
Historically correctness comes with a spicy price. Fluted frames are the most recognizable designs of that period. Cove or ogee fluted panels with acanthus leaf corner ornaments made of compo. Top rails with chain like ornament in between (or large laurel/oak leaf compo ornamentation with straps and corner blocks), large scooped burnished sides with a compo orated step at the end. Overlapping insert/s with compo beads and/or sand panel. Water gilded in 23K gold leaf. Burnished rails and flutes. Compo ornaments and flutes carved by hand. Slight imperfections. Should I continue?
Go here to see what you need to know exactly American Choice page 70
I am afraid that nothing like that is available today save for custom made frames by antique picture frame reproduction masters.
Your client IS in for a BIG surprise. Such a frame reproduction is very expensive and I gathered that he wants to frame several pages...
Modern manufacturers may possibly sell some fluted moldings but those look as remote from resembling 19th Century designs as we are from actually back horse riding together between Richmond and Santa Fe.
Black background gold straped glass mats were popular back then. Again, not many left alive and still able to revive such beauties anymore.

[ 02-01-2006, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Whynot ]
 
Fortunately, my client is an antique dealer and he knows and expects there to be a cost to historically correct. I have researched the frames and the ornamentation compo. Thanks for the additional web-site you provided... Any clues about mats?

Gina Hurst,CPF
 
Would the average American family have a frame as ornate as the one you linked in your post, Whynot? I have the great fortune of having some family heirlooms, including portraits from that era, and they are in dark wood cove frames with gold liners.
 
dark wood cove frames with gold liners
I have some of these as well, They came in a variety of depths and decorations. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that back in the mid to late 19th century in the US, most of the frames were made by cabinet makers and some of them were very simple flat profiles, and some were just carved wood trying to imitate the more ornate European frames. We have a framed piece from I think 1860 or so and it is a 1 1/2 wide dark finished wood veneer of some type. We also have an old needlework sampler framed in the same way with a wider wood veneer frame with a sort of feather painting decoration on it with square wood blocks on each corner. This may also be a regional thing.
 
Meghan, you bring up a great point. What Cornel linked to would be for more of a formal painting for a wealthier family.

What you have would have been for a "lesser" frame; Not the mantle piece. Those would be in the study or hall or even the bedroom.

The "average American family" would have had at best one or two "family" paintings. In your style of frame. The Gold liners are the give-aways.

They were probably made somewhere in the Carolinas by furniture makers. Maybe nicely well aged cherry. The liner is very possibly Alder or Poplar unless they were letting the grain show through the leaf [such as the Pre-Rafaelites], and then the liner would most likely be quarter-sawn Ash or Oak.

For the childrens book, that is the kind of frame I would lean to. 1-1/2" scoshia moulding in cherry [dark] with a 3/4" gold liner.

ph neutral linen or cotton for the mat.
 
We're used to seeing them but I'm wondering if, in 1876, a children's print would have been matted?

I'm thinking it might have just been stuck into a plain black frame - or maybe one painted to simulate wood grain - and backed with a wood shingle.

How much historical accuracy is your client willing to sacrifice for the sake of preservation?

Kit
 
Since your client is an antiques dealer, maybe he can get some antique frames from that era and make them work with his prints? It may actually be cheaper than finding historically accurate reproductions, and would definitely be more authentic.
 
PF-NEC-138... nice Cornel

Kit you are entirely correct... most likely never framed, but if so; just a wood shingle backing and hand rolled glass.

That is where the wood/gold liner comes in. Seal the rabit with 3lb cut shellac, and so Jim doesn't jump all over me, then line with Lineco frame lining tape. [Don't forget to burnish it].
 
The window mat was invented at the British Museum
in the 1850's, so using one would not be wrong,
but many 19th Century items, especially documents,
were framed without window mats. Sealing the
sides of the frame and spacing the glazing away
from the print are useful, if you go that way.


Hugh
 
WOW! Thanks everyone!

Great ideas for keeping the documents historically correct in design and keeping the items safe with conservation framing. My customer's interest first, is preserving the items, then historical design second... Just trying to combine the two...

Gina
 
I just posted this on HH but I'll put it here too with another plug for "Eastlake" style.
I believe there were a variety of
frames being used during this period. Probably the lavish compo designs wouldn't
be appropriate but you could try compo ornaments related to the subject ( drum,
flag, tri corner hat,etc.) on a simple flat profile in the trophy or portrait
style. Oak, often alternating with gilded compo was, I think, also popular,
probably ordered through catalogs for mass consumption. "Eastlake" style was
also popular and a personal favorite. I don't think mats as we use them were in
use at the time but you could do one decorated eastlake style. Fabric surrounds
may have been in use particularily in shadow or memento boxes.
db_dp10.jpg

--
 
Originally posted by Whynot:
something like what one can see on the left side of this page, maybe?
American Choice page 49
I'm glad you posted your website Cornel, those moldings are absolutely beautiful!


Terry-that is just excellent!
 
My attempt at the "Eastlake" style. There is a heavy gesso layer then top coat with a color then incise the design. Very popular in the 1870's I think. It's hard to remember so far back.
 
Originally,the cut window mount/matwas developed from what was known as a sunken mount - i.e. a opening cut into a card which was then laid down onto another.This meant that the whole paper could be viewd. The idea being that collectors of prints,drawings etc could stack their artworks in piles or boxes in safety.

The use of mounts - invariably undecorated - in framing came later,along with the wide water- gilded slips/inlays and later the oil-gilded oak slips/inlays of the Pre-Raphaelite period.

Border line decoration, although plentiful throughout the history of printmaking did not become popular on mounts/mats until the late 19th/early 20th century.

Simplicity was the order of the day. No bad thing in my opinion.
 
What comes to mind are the frames typically used on the Currier and Ives prints from the mid 1800's. Simple sloped frame with a cross grain veneer, possibly walnut. I've seen some with a gilded lip, but don't know if those were done later or not.

Beautiful Eastlake Terry. I have a couple deep well frames with incised liners. Are those Eastlake as well?
 
I don't know Wally but here's a little backround.

Late Victorian
1870-1890


The later decades of the 19th C. were an age of grandeur and opulent display. Fine gilded frames of the period were constructed of wide length moldings incorporating a variety of naturalistic and geometric motifs. They were embellished with corner ornaments, all made on a scale to match their grand surroundings. Frames manufactured for the more general market were also built up from length moldings, but they lack the individualized ornamentation of the finer frames, and were more often finished in oil gilt, which lacks the brilliance of water gilt, and cannot be burnished to a high lustre. Their decorative quality is, nonetheless, highly useful today.

It was the excessive extravagance of Victorian picture frames that the English designer Charles Eastlake (1836-1906) railed against in his book, Hints on Household Taste, first published in 1868. Eastlake denigrated picture frames, in which "...the wood is overlaid with a species of composition, molded into wretched forms, which pass for ornament as soon as they are gilded....This sort of frame distracts the eye by its fussiness." (p. 193) Although he did not totally reject the inventions of the Industrial Revolution, Eastlake longed for a simpler age, and he admired the hand-carved frames of the 18th C. Eastlake wanted frames to be functional. He preferred ornament incised rather than carved in relief, which he felt was too distracting to the eye, and the molding slanted back toward the wall, so as not to cast the picture in shadow.

Eastlake style frames, a label which Mr. Eastlake disowned in a later edition of his book, were made from manufactured length molding, which artisans coated with gesso and ebonized. They also created marbleized surfaces in various shades of green or grey or brown. After the framemaker cut the lengths to size and assembled the frame, he incised floral or geometric patterns into the black surface, revealing the white gesso beneath. This final touch give the frames an individual quality, which belies their industrial origins.

Another variant on Victorian frame design at the end of the 19th C. was the Aesthetic style, an amalgomation of Medievalism and Orientalism. Like the Eastlake style, Aesthetic frames are ebonized and have incised surface patterns. Others are decorated with motifs taken from nature, leaves, flowers, nuts, which are molded in low relief and highlighted with metallic paints in gold, silver and copper colors. The variety of their surface patterns reveals a remarkable Victorian inventiveness and creativity.

The Industrial Revolution brought with it the art of photography and the chromolithograph, as well as mass production of picture frames. Landscape and portraiture were no longer the sole domain of the rich. The middle classes decorated their walls with photographic likenesses of themselves and reproductions of famous paintings. There were thousands of fancy moldings manufactured to satisfy the demand for frames to house these artworks. Many of these frames were in the Aesthetic and Eastlake styles.
(from marywebster.com website)
 
Hi Kit, thanks for your note. I've lurked quite a lot, but since we were flooded out of our house in October I've had other things to be doing. (we hope to move back home in 2 weeks).In any case much of Warped has,quite naturally, been intensely American,so much so that I have not felt up to many contributions.

Have had a small publication success! Will email you soon.

Regards Alan

PS Nice piece Terry
 
those Eastlake frames sure are beautiful. I have a few on display in my shop right now -- including a pair that I purchased from Mary Webster (who wrote the description of the Eastlake style frames that Terry quoted). If I could figure out how I'd post a photo...


If you're looking for an antique frame I highly recommend Mary -- she's knowledgeable, has a nice selection, and is very friendly and helpful. marywebster.com
 
My two cents on the historical framing of these childrens book illustrations.

In the period of the books printing these images would never have been framed. They would have been left in the book. So to try and frame them to the period would technicaly be incorrect. Especialy for an antique dealer. I do understand why you would want to try to maintain a sense of period to these peices though.

But as many people have described before, most frames that have been discussed are portrait frames which are completely diferent from the type of frame that you should be using. A print traditionaly would be framed in a drawing frame. A drawing frame is a reletively smaller version of a frame of a given period. Ranging in size from 1/2" to 1 1/2".
 
Back
Top