Frames on the Internet

A short survey of picture frame resources and related sites on the internet, organized alphabetically by website address. Compiled by Lynn Roberts, March 2004.

www.arnoldwiggins.com Website of the London dealer, Arnold Wiggins & Sons, incorporating a section on frame articles, with several brief illustrated items on specific frames or frame types, and longer essays on the frames of George Romney and Sir Thomas Lawrence; these replicate the pamphlets Wiggins have published at various times.

www.eliwilner.com Website of the New York frame dealer, Eli Wilner & Co. Includes short historical articles on framing, dating from the 1990s; a frame bibliography, especially useful for American frames, and updated to include publications of 2000; a glossary; an abstract of The Gilded Edge by Eli Wilner, published September 2000, with list of chapters and 6 enlargeable illustrations; pages on past lectures and exhibitions and on the current timetable of lectures and exhibitions.

www.fineart.co.uk Website of the Fine Art Trade Guild, 'to inform, promote and develop the art and framing industry', with a list of Guild-recommended framers in the United Kingdom and Eire, several European countries, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Canada and USA. There is also an online bookshop. There is a page for various framing awards, an open competition, and, more importantly, a page of current world-wide trade fairs and exhibitions concerned with the art & framing industries. The site also has links to the London School of Picture & Frame Restoration at http://www.restoration.demon.co.uk, and to The Art and Framing Headquarters at www.artframing.com, an American online Directory.

www.goldleafstudios.com Webpages of Gold Leaf Studios, Washington DC, a commercial framemaker's site which contain an essay with bibliography on French frames from Louis XIII to Art Nouveau, related to the exhibition Glorious Borders: Three Centuries of French Frames.

www.heydenryk.com Website of the House of Heydenryk, New York frame makers, founded in Amsterdam in 1845. The site includes a six-page interesting history of the business, including details of the many significant artists and museums with which the company has worked. It also features their antique and reproduction frame styles and original designs.

www.holtonframemakers.com/frames/reading.html A commercial site of Holton Studio Frame-Makers, Emeryville, California, concerned particularly with revival Arts and Crafts design. It includes a bibliography for frames of this period, a brief more general frame bibliography, links to other websites devoted to framing, and a list of libraries and other resources for the Arts and Crafts Movement.

www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm Website of the Louvre; this address points to the Collections Atlas, where use of the 'Search' option with the word 'cadres' will produce over 600 images of works illustrated in their frames, from Augustin to Wytman, taking in a frame designed by Bernini for his sculpture of the infant Jesus and a splendid group of Watteaus. All the images can be enlarged from thumbnails, but the text is only in French, and few of the frames are commented upon.

www.marywebster.com Commercial site of Mary Webster, Binghampton, New York, specializing in American frames from 1790 to the present day, where the frames are presented in five chronologically organized sections, with brief essays subjoined, and a short bibliography.

www.ngv.vic.gov.au Website of the National Gallery of Victoria; the 'Search' option produces few but interesting frame references.

www.paulmitchell.co.uk Website of the London frame dealer, Paul Mitchell Ltd. It includes various short essays on comparative framing of Old and Modern Master paintings, and the longer illustrated 'Brief History of the Frame'; also a bibliography (to 1998).

www.pictureframingmagazine.com Website of Picture Framing Magazine, where some of the articles listed can be read online or downloaded; there is also an online bookshop, with a section on the history of frames.

www.rijksmuseum.nl If the 'Search' option is used to locate 'picture frames', pages can be found which highlight ten of the most notable frames in the collection. The text is not particularly sophisticated or informative, but the images of frames are striking, and can be enlarged beyond screen-size to show a great deal of detail.

www.tate.org.uk/ophelia/materials_frame.htm Essay by the late John Anderson, Tate Frame Conservator, on the construction and possible history of the frame on J.E. Millais's Ophelia (1851-52). The 'Search' option on the Tate Gallery website can be used to reference all the paintings, which, in the short essay annexed to each, have a note mentioning the frame (mainly the Pre-Raphaelite works).

www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/html/jmw.htm The Correspondence of James McNeil Whistler: The Online Centenary Edition: Centre for Whistler Studies, University of Glasgow 2003. Accessible edition of Whistler's letters, with occasional references to frames, exhibition displays, etc.

www.whitfieldfineart.com Webpages on the site of British art dealer, Whitfield Fine Art; these reproduce and describe high quality antique frames.

www.iserv.net/~plucas/ The website set up by Pamela D. Lucas at the Furniture Design Collection at Grand Rapids Public Library is a well-organized site dealing with furniture in general, and gives access to a number of useful library databases.

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All images and text are subject to copyright protection. 08 August 2008