A Bit of Framing History...

Custom Framing Inside Information

Man, you will sure seem smart with this info (or maybe you'll just be a frame nerd like me).

There was a wonderful article in this month’s Veranda magazine about the history of the custom frame. It was a very concise article. I wish there could have been a bit more research involved, but I guess not everyone is as interested in custom framing as I am. (Go figure…)

The history of the frame goes back to “medieval ecclesiastical painting” which “were the first to be framed in a manner that would be recognized today” (Cossons, 130). The frames were made for protection, but they also mimicked the church’s windows in which they hung. Thus the paradigm for framing was born. The frame equates to the interior of the space in which it hangs. Things have not changed much.

In the 15th and 16th Centuries Renaissance craftsmen took the frame to new heights of elaborate construction. The frame became a specialty of craftsmanship like finish carpentry, or metal-smithing, and hence the elaborately decorated gold gilded frame was born by a need from the greatest art patron in European history…. Anybody?... the Catholic Church. The upper and newly developing “merchant class” also insisted on framing their belongings, which showed off the family’s personal wealth and taste. “Frames became secular as well as religious when wealthy merchants and aristocrats sought surrounds for the art they had commissioned” (Cossons, 132). The birth of the middle class in Renaissance Europe brought a higher demand for luxury items that only the very wealthy could afford years before.


The French took elaborate decoration to its extreme end with “Baroque and Rococo decorative schemes of the 17th and 18th centuries produced frames with ornate carving” (Cossons, 134). Think about craftspeople who dedicated their entire lives to carving frames. An entire industry was born out of this need for opulence, and it continues in 2007. You don’t send your million dollar client to Walmart to pick out a frame… at least I hope not. You send them to TRA Art Group (shameless self-promotion, sorry).

We skip forward to the birth of the “modern art movement”. Artists in the late 19th as well as early 20th century sought to challenge the notion of the frame just as they challenged the very notion of art. “Artists such as Seurate go so far as to paint a frame onto the canvass” (Cossons, 241). There is a great example of this at the DIA. One of my fav’s too. “Degas, Monet, Pissarro, and Van Gogh preferred white and colored frames, which were barred from exhibition in the Paris Salons of 1884” (Cossons, 241). It’s hard to imagine the Impressionists as rebels. We are surrounded by their impact everyday. In fact the Walmart and Target set see nothing but pure visual delight in the art of the Impressionists. I’ll bet there are more Monet and Van Gogh posters framed at Michaels Arts and Crafts than those by all other artists combined (pure speculation on my part). When put in the context of their own time period, they were living at the margins of not only the art world but society also. They did everything they could to fight the paradigm of the Paris Salon (which was really the only show in town if you wanted to be a professional artist). “The role of the picture frame has changed over time from protective surround to a statement of wealth, position and, in the case of the Impressionists, rebellion” (Cossons, 241).

So, the frame is really part of the art, not just an extension. You cannot have one without thinking about the context of the other. Whether you put a frame on the piece or not, leaving the art frameless is as pragmatic an effort as choosing one. I remember a critique at years end at CCS. One of the requirements for showing your art was for it to be “framed”. My paintings were rejected by the faculty. The frames overwhelmed the art. The teacher’s suggestion: “Don’t frame your art.” That was a hard lesson, especially since I spent all night building the frames.

So, beware of the framer that suggests the large expensive frame for the piece of art that does not require any frame at all. If the art does not need a frame I always tell the client. If the work is especially old or valuable, the original frame, as worn out as it may be, could be a considerable part of the history and monetary worth of the work of art. As for the Monet print in the purple metal frame which was dry mounted at Michaels… you are on your own.

Jeff Haefner
November 2007

Works Cited
Cossons, Malcom. “Art at the Edge, The Role of Frames”. Veranda Oct. 2007

That's right a works cited page on a blog! A tear gathers in the corner of my english teacher's eye...