A picture frame is a protective and decorative edging for a picture, such as a painting or photograph. [1] It makes displaying the work safer and easier and both sets the picture apart from its surroundings and aesthetically integrates it with them.
A picture frame is a container that borders the perimeter of a picture, and is used for the protection, display, and visual appreciation of objects and imagery such as photographs, canvas paintings, drawings and prints, posters, mirrors, shadow box memorabilia, and textiles.
Traditionally picture frames have been made of wood, and it remains very popular because wood frames can provide strength, be shaped in a broad range of profiles, and allow a variety of surface treatments. Other materials include metals, e.g. silver, bronze, aluminum, and stiff plastics such as polystyrene. A frame surface may be of any color or texture. Both genuine gilding and imitation gold remain popular, although many other surfaces are to be found in most framing establishments. Some picture frames have elaborate moldings, which may refer to the subject matter. Intricate decorations are often made of molded, then gilded plaster over a wood base. Picture frame mouldings come in a wide variety of profiles, generally in some sort of L shape with an upward "lip" and a horizontal rabbet. The rabbet functions as a shelf to hold the frame glazing (if any is to be used), some sort of spacer or mat/matte to keep the object safely behind the inner surface of the glazing, the object itself, and backing boards to protect the object from physical damage and environmental pollutants. The lip extends a proportionate distance up from the edge of the rabbet. It restrains materials in the frame and can be used to help set off or reveal the picture aesthetically.
The picture frame may contain a protective "glazing" of picture framing glass or acrylic sheet, e.g. Acrylite or Plexiglas. If the art in the frame is considered dispensable or if the exhibition environment is highly controlled, no glazing may be used. Since the 1980s significant advances have been made in the manufacture of picture glazings, creating a much broader range of options in both glass and acrylic products. Choosing which to use requires taking into account a variety of each object's characteristics: size, media used, condition of media, perceived value of object, anticipated use of the object, e.g. extended exhibition periods or travel. It is wise to consult an experienced art framer or conservator for help in making the better choice. Now, both picture framing glass and acrylic sheet are available with anti-reflective coatings to make the glazing virtually invisible under most lighting conditions. Except for pictures of only temporary interest, glazing should incorporate a filter to block almost all ultraviolet radiation (a UV filter) from penetrating the glazing. [1] This filter slows the photocatalytic degradation of organic materials in the picture. Both glass and acrylic glazings are available with built-in anti-static properties. This option is necessary for objects with friable or degraded media, which would be pulled off the object and onto the glazing by static electric forces.
Picture frames are generally square or rectangular, though circular and oval frames are not uncommon. Frames in more unusual shapes such as football shapes, stars, hearts can be hand carved by a professional wood carver or carpenter (or possibly molded out of wood pulp). There are also picture frames designed to go around corners. A popular design is the scoop, an indent in the frame adding depth.
The earliest frames are thought to be those that surrounded fayum mummy portraits. The stucco frames may have been used to hang the portraits in the owner's home until the time of death, at which point the portrait would have been placed over the mummy. Another theory is that the portraits were painted close to death and were carried around the city in a funeral procession before the body was taken to the embalmer. [2]
Although framing borders in ancient art were used to divide scenes and ornamentation by ancient Egyptian and Greek artists in pottery and wallpaintings, the first carved wooden frames as we know them today appeared on small panel paintings in twelfth and thirteenth century Europe. According to a historical series published in Picture Frame Magazine, these early "framed panel paintings were made from one piece. The area to be painted was carved out, leaving a raised framing border around the outside edge, like a tray. The whole piece was then gessoed and gilded. Painting the image on the flat panel was the last thing to be done." [3]
When it was realized this method of producing a frame and the image within from one slab of wood was too costly, "a more efficient method was eventually developed which used mitred moulding strips. These strips were attached to a flat wooden panel which produced a similar result to the carved panel, but were more cost effective. This type of frame is known as an engaged frame. The early ones were made of simple wooden moulding strips attached to the outside edge of a wooden panel." [3]
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, most European frames were church-commissioned and largely unmovable as they were altarpieces and a large part of the church's architecture. The frames were ornamented with architectural elements mimicking the exteriors of the great cathedrals. However, the Italian Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries saw the rise of arts patrons extending beyond the church. Wealthy nobles such as the Medici family could now bring art and frames into their estate by commissioning allegorical, devotional and portrait paintings. [4] This was the advent of the portable or moveable frame. [5] Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (1423) is the first altarpiece made with panel and frame in two separate pieces, making it the first independent frame as we know it today.
Under the reign of Francis I, France's first Renaissance monarch from 1515 through 1547, art came to the forefront of daily life and flourished along with picture frames. Many workers came from Italy to the arts trade, including Leonardo da Vinci, whom "Francis convinced to leave Italy in the last part of his life." Frames were now designed by furniture builders rather than the artist, sculptor or architect as in the past. Books on furniture and interior design were published and in distribution to a wider market than ever before.
From 1610 to 1643, under the reign of Louis XIII in France, the influence of court and refinement took center stage in frame designs. The profiles became thinner than their Italian predecessors, and continuous design such as egg-and-dart, ribbon and flow of leaves, and pronounced low relief corner designs appeared. This paved the way for Baroque design in picture framing, and "Spanish, Flemish, and Italian influences were all at work to produce a curious intermingling and exchange of ideas." [6]
In England, in the late 17th century the "Lely frame" became popular, a narrow moulding with a spray of small flowers at the corner, and central cartouches. The design was based on a French Louis XIII style. Often carved from pine wood, the frames were gilded or silvered. [7] The name is from the portrait artist Peter Lely. An English version of the "auricular" mannerist style, meaning curving "ear-shaped" forms, was also popular in the 17th century, and is now known as a "Sunderland frame". The name derives from the collection of Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland at Althorp. Sunderland style frames for a series of paintings by John Michael Wright of the 22 Fire Judges were made by Mary Ashfield, Mary Fleshier, Mary Dorrell, and John Norris between 1671 and 1675. [8] [9] [10]
Pictures frames as art were highly developed in Orthodox countries (e.g., Russia, Serbia) and used to cover icons in churches. The earliest American frames, known as American Empire Style Frames, are very spare and utilitarian. They are similar to the simple cove or scoop in wall molding found in colonial architecture. [11]
A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a doorway or portal. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security by controlling access to the doorway (portal). Conventionally, it is a panel that fits into the doorway of a building, room, or vehicle. Doors are generally made of a material suited to the door's task. They are commonly attached by hinges, but can move by other means, such as slides or counterbalancing.
Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent material, a sash set in a frame in the opening; the sash and frame are also referred to as a window. Many glazed windows may be opened, to allow ventilation, or closed to exclude inclement weather. Windows may have a latch or similar mechanism to lock the window shut or to hold it open by various amounts.
A shoji is a door, window or room divider used in traditional Japanese architecture, consisting of translucent sheets on a lattice frame. Where light transmission is not needed, the similar but opaque fusuma is used. Shoji usually slide, but may occasionally be hung or hinged, especially in more rustic styles.
Panelling is a millwork wall covering constructed from rigid or semi-rigid components. These are traditionally interlocking wood, but could be plastic or other materials.
A rabbet or rebate is a recess or groove cut into the edge of a piece of machinable material, usually wood. When viewed in cross-section, a rabbet is two-sided and open to the edge or end of the surface into which it is cut.
Moulding, or molding, also coving, is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster, but may be of plastic or reformed wood. In classical architecture and sculpture, the moulding is often carved in marble or other stones. In historic architecture, and some expensive modern buildings, it may be formed in place with plaster.
A framer is someone who builds or creates frames. In construction work, frames may be built from wood or metal and provide support and shape to a structure. In a related sense, framers may create frames for art works, pictures, or mirrors. The term framer is also used for the authors of a formal text such as a constitution.
Frame and panel construction, also called rail and stile, is a woodworking technique often used in the making of doors, wainscoting, and other decorative features for cabinets, furniture, and homes. The basic idea is to capture a 'floating' panel within a sturdy frame, as opposed to techniques used in making a slab solid wood cabinet door or drawer front, the door is constructed of several solid wood pieces running in a vertical or horizontal direction with exposed endgrains. Usually, the panel is not glued to the frame but is left to 'float' within it so that seasonal movement of the wood comprising the panel does not distort the frame.
In the picture framing industry, a mat is a thin, flat piece of paper-based material included within a picture frame, which serves as additional decoration and to perform several other, more practical functions, such as separating the art from the glass. Putting mats in a frame is called matting, a term which can also usually be used interchangeably with mat. The French term, occasionally used in English, is passe-partout. A picture is placed beneath it, with the cutout framing it. The passe-partout serves two purposes: first, to prevent the image from touching the glass, and second, to frame the image and enhance its visual appeal. The cutout in the passe-partout is usually beveled to avoid casting shadows on the picture. The French word may also be used for the tape used to stick the back of the picture to its frame.
The National Museum of Decorative Arts is an art museum in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Italian Baroque interior design refers to high-style furnishing and interior decorating carried out in Italy during the Baroque period, which lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century. In provincial areas, Baroque forms such as the clothes-press or armadio continued to be used into the 19th century.
Picture framing glass usually refers to flat glass or acrylic ("plexi") used for framing artwork and for presenting art objects in a display box.
Pastiglia, an Italian term meaning "pastework", is low relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain. The technique was used in a variety of ways in Italy during the Renaissance. The term is mostly found in English applied to gilded work on picture frames or small pieces of furniture such as wooden caskets and cassoni, and also on areas of panel paintings, but there is some divergence as to the meaning of the term between these specialisms.
The auricular style or lobate style is a style of ornamental decoration, mainly found in Northern Europe in the first half of the 17th century, bridging Northern Mannerism and the Baroque. The style was especially important and effective in silversmithing, but was also used in minor architectural ornamentation such as door and window reveals, picture frames, and a wide variety of the decorative arts. It uses softly flowing abstract shapes in relief, sometimes asymmetrical, whose resemblance to the side view of the human ear gives it its name, or at least its "undulating, slithery and boneless forms occasionally carry a suggestion of the inside of an ear or a conch shell". It is often associated with stylized marine animal forms, or ambiguous masks and shapes that might be such, which seem to emerge from the rippling, fluid background, as if the silver remained in its molten state.
The conservation and restoration of painting frames is the process through which picture frames are preserved. Frame conservation and restoration includes general cleaning of the frame, as well as in depth processes such as replacing damaged ornamentation, gilding, and toning.
The conservation and restoration of paintings is carried out by professional painting conservators. Paintings cover a wide range of various mediums, materials, and their supports. Painting types include fine art to decorative and functional objects spanning from acrylics, frescoes, and oil paint on various surfaces, egg tempera on panels and canvas, lacquer painting, water color and more. Knowing the materials of any given painting and its support allows for the proper restoration and conservation practices. All components of a painting will react to its environment differently, and impact the artwork as a whole. These material components along with collections care will determine the longevity of a painting. The first steps to conservation and restoration is preventive conservation followed by active restoration with the artist's intent in mind.
The Newcomb-Macklin Company of Chicago, Illinois was a nationally prominent manufacturer of hand-carved and gilded picture frames. The company was in operation from 1883 until 1979. Many of Newcomb-Macklin's frames designed in the early 20th century reflected the esthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in the United States between 1900 and 1925. Newcomb-Macklin frames in the arts and crafts style are today regarded as antiques and are often utilized by collectors and dealers to lend an air of authenticity to the framing of period American paintings.
Gold ground or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.
In visual arts, the support is a solid surface onto which the painting is placed, typically a canvas or a panel. Support is technically distinct from the overlaying ground, but sometimes the latter term is used in a broad sense of "support" to designate any surface used for painting, for example, paper for watercolor or plaster for fresco.
Framers say they aren't getting rich protecting some of your most precious memories and art, but they know you have sticker shock.
