Until the end of the eighteenth century, picture frames were mostly either plain timber or carved and gilded. As the number of people able to afford art works increased, faster and cheaper ways of making and decorating frames were developed. The most significant new method used 'composition' ornament.
Composition, when freshly made, is a pliable material achieved by heating animal glue with water in one pan while dissolving tree resin (rosin) in linseed oil in another, mixing the two at the right moment and adding enough chalk to create a dough-like material. There are many different recipes using varying amounts of the same basic substances, while some recipes include extras that are believed to give greater plasticity, definition of decorative detail, or long term stability, though the efficacy of these additions is questionable. At Tate a simple basic recipe has been used since the 1980s. When pliable, composition can then be pressed into beautifully carved boxwood moulds. After removal it is allowed to cool and dry a little before being applied to the carefully sanded and whitened surface of the frame (using animal glue). When the trade for carving frames collapsed in the nineteenth century, some carvers found work in carrying out the reverse carving of these boxwood moulds.
In 2002, the painting The Temples of Paestum (Tate N01029) which the artist William Linton (1791-1876) bequeathed to Tate on his death in 1876, was cleaned and conserved. It was decided that the painting should be appropriately framed to complement the restoration.
Replicas may be made for different reasons:
In the case of Linton's painting, and unusually for a painting in Tate's collection, a replica was required for the third of these reasons. The history of the existing frame was not documented but it had been altered in the late nineteenth century to take a glazing door with the original sight edge sawn out and moved back. Several of the decorative mouldings had been replaced only partially. The corner decoration was incomplete, the whitened surface was powdering off, the frame had been cut in half across ways and it was delaminating along the lengths. This frame has been archived
There were three possible choices:
The third alternative was chosen. Study of the frame confirmed which parts of the decorative scheme were original and enabled conservators to determine the probable style and size of the missing details. Through picture research frames sharing similar ornament to Linton's were found, but never an exact copy. However, examination of the original provided a 'footprint' to guide the process. To establish the final choice several rough mock-ups, as well as a full sample corner, were made (Fig.2).
When replicating decorative elements from one frame to use on another, conservators would normally take a silicone rubber mould of the parts to be copied, use these moulds to make plaster copies, then glue these copies to a board, 'improve' them and use these as a positive to make a polyester resin mould, from which to press out new composition ornament. Composition can be pressed out from rubber moulds if the rubber is firm enough but the sharpness of the detail can be poor.
For the long lines of decoration and the tracery pattern over the body of the frame four polyester resin moulds were made.
The large thistle-like motif in the corner is a plaster copy of the original. Plaster was used for ease of removal from the silicone rubber mould. These elements are screwed to the frame as was done originally. The acanthus leaves and terminal ornament are replicated from a frame in Tate's collection of an earlier date but appropriate in shape, size and style, though these choices are inevitably speculative. For the corner acanthus leaves a special type of firm rubber was sourced to allow for pressing out of the composition ornament.
The construction process is a lengthy one, requiring several different stages - machining the wood; gluing sections to make the profile; fine tuning the profile by hand; disguising the glue lines with strips of silk; painting the wood with ten or more coats of whitening (animal size and chalk); sanding by hand with grades of paper up to 500 grit; the jointing of the frame and making good the structure. On top of this, it takes several weeks to apply the ornament and gilding. This frame was oil gilded, with the gold being laid onto a surface of tinted oil size.
Before the painting was fitted, the frame was toned to give it an impression of age, suiting it better to an aged mid-nineteenth century painting, rather than leaving it with the brighter look the replica would have had when new.
See Linton's Temples of Paestum in the Collection.
February 2007
