British picture framemakers, 1610-1950 - B
A selective directory, 3rd edition December 2012 (*revised entry, **new entry). Contributions are welcome, to Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
IntroductionResources and bibliography
*Peter Babell, Long Acre, near James St, London 1763, James St by 1768-1771. Papier mâché frame and ornament maker.
Peter Babell (d.1771) was listed in Long Acre in Mortimer's Universal Director of 1763 as ‘Designer and Modeller. One of the first Improvers of Papier Maché Ornaments for Cielings, Chimney-pieces, Picture-frames, &c’. He took out insurance with the Sun Fire Office as a papier mâché maker from Long Acre, near James St in 1763 and from James St in 1768.
An obituary notice in 1771 described Babell as ‘a draftsman in architectural ornaments, and one who chiefly contributed to improve the Paper-Machee art to its present perfection’ (London Evening Post 28 September 1771). It is unclear whether the design book by ‘Babel of Paris’, A New Book of Ornaments, published in London in 1752, was the work of the Paris-based master, Pierre Edmé Babel (c.1720-1775?) or of Peter Babell in London. In his will, made 7 August 1770 and proved 4 October 1771, Peter Babell of James St in the parish of St Paul Covent Garden, named his wife as Mary Babell and made provision so that she could choose to carry on his business of making papier mâché. He also referred to Peter Smith and Joseph Defoure, probably Joseph Duffour (qv). His widow appears to be the Mary Babell, who married John Cobb on 24 February 1772 at St Paul Covent Garden, probably John Cobb (c.1715-1778), the well-known cabinet-maker of 72 St Martin's Lane.
Little is known of Babell’s work but the Delaval papers document a commission in 1766 when Babell wrote on 24 July to Sir John Hussey Delaval at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, mentioning sending ‘The Border for the two Picture Frames’, and continuing, ‘I am Sorry the Work came above the Price that my Lady was pleas’d to mention. I have Charged the very lowest, But the Moulding being so Bold did take more Gold, than I thought at First. I have sanded the ground of the Border to give a Relief to the Ornaments’; Babell charged Delaval £8.15s for 70 feet of ‘Paper machee Rich Border Gilt in Oil Gold’.
Sources: Geoffrey Beard, ‘Babel’s “A New Book of Ornaments”, 1752’, Furniture History, vol.11, 1975, pp.31-2; John Cornforth, ‘Putting up with Georgian DIY’, Country Life, vol.186, 9 April 1992, pp.54-6 (for the Delaval papers, Northumberland Record Office); London Metropolitan Archives, Sun Fire Office policy registers, 144/195788, 150/204877, 180/253389.
William Badger, 97 Boundary Road, St John's Wood, London NW 1871-1887 as carver and gilder, 49 Dorset St, Portman Square 1877-1888 as manufacturing artists’ colourman.
See British artists' suppliers on the National Portrait Gallery website.
John Bainbridge, see Thomas Fentham
William Barry, see Francis Draper
Added March 2013
Charles Bathurst, 5 Ranelagh Road, Westborne Square, Paddington, London 1871-1891, road renumbered 1891/2, 39 Ranelagh Road 1892-1906. Carver, gilder and picture framemaker.
Charles Bathurst (c.1829-1914) may be the individual christened on 22 August 1830 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the son of George and Susanna Bathurst. His first wife, May Calder, died age 45 in 1867 and he remarried in 1869, to Eliza Farnden. He can be found in eight successive censuses (with his stated age varyingly suggesting that he was born between 1827 and 1829): in 1841, age 14, in the household of Elizabeth Bathurst, staymaker, age 60, in Bethnal Green; in 1851 in the household of Francis Gray, bootmaker, in Soho, when he was described as Gray’s son-in-law and a gilder, age 23, with George Bathurst, also described as a son-in-law, a picture framemaker, age 24; in 1861 in Paddington as a gilder, age 32, with his wife Mary, age 40, sons, Charles, age 4, born New York (where Bathurst and his wife had travelled in 1855), and George, age 3, born Soho, London; in 1871, 1881 and 1891 at 5 Ranelagh Road in Paddington as a carver and gilder, with his second wife, Eliza; in 1871 and 1881 with the children from his first marriage, Charles, George and Norman; in 1901 as an employer and carver and gilder at 29 Ranelagh Road; and in 1911 as a retired carver and gilder living with his wife in Maida Vale. He died in the Paddington district, age 85, in 1914.
His son, George Percy Bathurst, took on the business at 39 Ranelagh Road from 1907, continuing it at this address until at least 1930.
Picture framing work: Bathurst used his framing label, found on the picture by Philip H. Calderon described below, to advertise as a carver, gilder and picture framemaker, offering the usual services to clean, line and restore pictures, to clean and restore old prints, to mount drawings and to regild old frames. He provided the frame for Calderon’s Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV, parting with her younger son, the Duke of York, 1893, a running overlapping small-scale leaf pattern (Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, information from Robert Zilli, February 2013). There are three frames with Bathurst’s framing label in the Victoria and Albert Museum, given in 2000 by Mrs Lucy Jebb, a descendant of the architect John Hungerford Pollen, and one of these frames may possibly have been used for Pollen's 1887 Royal Academy exhibit, Ceiling for Blickling Hall.
*Samuel Bartington 1816-1845, Mrs Mahala Bartington 1846-1851, Mahala Bartington & Son (also described as M. & B. Bartington) 1852-1860, Benjamin Bartington 1860-1866. At 24 Beckford Row, Walworth, London 1816-1828 or later, 4 Crown Row, Mile End Road 1832-1833, 95 Wardour St 1833-1848, 58 Wardour St 1849-1864, 45 Wardour St 1860, 24 Charlotte St 1865, 53 Wardour St 1866. Carvers and gilders, picture dealers, initially brokers of household goods.
Samuel Barnfield Bartington (1783-1845), initially a cabinetmaker, traded as a broker and picture dealer. After his death, his wife Mahala (d.1860) and youngest son Benjamin (b.1828) traded as picture framemakers. She died at 58 Wardour St in 1860, leaving effects worth under £200.
Samuel and Mahala Bartington had eight children between 1814 and 1828. In the baptismal registers for his children he is described as a cabinetmaker (in 1820 as a broker), resident at Princes St, Walworth in 1814 and 1816 and thereafter at Beckford Row, Walworth. Samuel Bartington traded as a broker of household goods at 23 and 24 Beckford Row, Walworth, according to his fire insurance policy of 16 December 1816 (London Metropolitan Archives, Sun Fire Office policy registers, vol.472). By 1823 he was dealing in pictures, occasionally advertising the sale of portraits (The Times 28 May 1823, 20 May 1841).
Framing work: In 1853 M. & B. Bartington, claiming the business to have been established for 30 years, advertised 'their large collection of ancient and modern carved frames, of the most choice and scarce patterns; likewise a large assortment of carved and composition gilt frames ready for use' (The Times 14 May 1853). M. & B. Bartington framed G.F. Watts's portrait, Father of the Artist, 1833 (Watts Gallery, Compton) in a complex moulding frame with a label from 58 Wardour St, and therefore probably dating to the 1850s (information from Lynn Roberts).
*Frederick Bartram, 3 Grafton Place, Euston Square, London by 1871-1881 or later. Carver and gilder.
Frederick Bartram (1827-1883?) was born in Stamford and was recorded there in the 1851 census as a carpenter, age 24. He was in London by 1855 when he married Charlotte Chapman at St Pancras parish chapel, with his brother Alfred as one of the witnesses. In subsequent census records, he was recorded in 1861 at 33 Gordon Square, St Pancras, as a carpenter and joiner, with his wife Charlotte and two children, and in 1881 at 3 Grafton Place as a master carver and gilder, age 53, born Stamford, with his wife and four children, including his eldest son, William, age 21, listed as a carver and gilder.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti used Frederick Bartram for moving and repairing a pagoda cabinet in 1870, and proposed to use him for framing work in 1871 (Fredeman, letters 70.50 and 71.176). In 1876 Rossetti tried ‘L. Bartram', probably the same individual, for picture framing, following a disagreement with Foord & Dickinson (qv); however, he criticised Bartram’s work and in the process he provoked a strong reaction from this framemaker: ‘The punched design on the flat I consider the best I have ever done in my life, in fact, the frame is a perfect specimen of good workmanship and materials of unsurpassed quality’ (Fredeman, letter 76.90, see also Simon 1996 pp.88, 89). John Everett Millais used Bartram for unspecified work, for which Bartram acknowledged payment in 1871 (Tate Archive, Millais loan, item 1/67).
For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
William Bayley, see Charles Mitchell May
James Bazin, see Benjamin Charpentier
*William Beaumont, The King’s Arms, 24 Leicester Square, London by 1788-1794. Carver and gilder.
William Beaumont may be the picture framer of this name, of St John the Evangelist Westminster, who took George Eller as an apprentice in 1764. He married Sarah Vialls at St Martin-in-the-Fields in September 1779. His trade card, bearing the date 1788 (Banks coll, repr. Heal 1972 p.5), describes him as nephew and successor to Thomas Vialls (qv), but unsurprisingly he is not mentioned in Vialls’s will in March 1779, which was made some six months before his marriage into the family. Beaumont took further apprentices in 1791 and 1792 and he is possibly the William Beaumont recorded at Mary-le-Bow-Fields in 1791.
Sources: DEFM, to which this account is indebted. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
Joseph Bell, Bigg Market, Newcastle upon Tyne 1778, Above Nun Gate 1782, The St Luke, High-Bridge 1782-1801 or later, The St Luke, Newgate St. Painter, artist and colourman.
See British artists' suppliers on the National Portrait Gallery website.
William Benham, 9 Devonshire Terrace, Notting Hill Gate, London 1863-1888. Artists' colourman, printseller, picture framemaker etc.
See British artists' suppliers on the National Portrait Gallery website.
*Bennett & Jennison Ltd, Julian St, Grimsby, Lincolnshire by 1913-1919, Weelsby St 1919, Ladysmith Road, Grimsby by 1921-1955 or later. London showroom, 27 Chancery Lane 1924, Napier House, 24/27 High Holborn, London WC1 1929-1935, 67 Aldersgate St EC1 1936-1941. Picture frame and moulding manufacturers.
It was claimed in 1914 that most mouldings in Britain were foreign in origin but that Bennett & Jennison were producing British mouldings (Fine Art Trade Journal, vol.10, 1914, information from Jeremy Adamson). From the 1911 census, it would appear that the partners in the business were Solomon Bennett and George Robert Jennison, with Bennett listed as a picture frame manufacturer, born Russian/Poland and naturalised British, with five children, two of whom, a daughter and a son, were active in the business, while Jennison appears as manager of a picture frame manufactory, with wife and daughter. Solomon Bennett (c.1849-1916) previously traded, as a carver, gilder and artistic picture framer from 82 Cleethorpes Road, also providing services as a plumber, glazier, gasfitter and wholesale glass merchant, claiming that his business had been established in 1868 (Grimsby & Cleethorpes Directory, 1902). George Robert Jennison (1871-1949) died at Cleethorpes in 1949, leaving effects worth £17,099.
Bennett & Jennison Ltd was listed as fine art publishers in the 1909 telephone directory. There was a fire on their premises in 1917 (The Times 25 June 1917). The business exhibited at the British Industries Fairs in 1922, 1929 and 1947, offering a range of fancy goods, including picture frames, mouldings and framed pictures (Grace’s Guide at www.gracesguide.co.uk). In 1924 the business was described as makers of picture frame mouldings, photo frames, fire screens, advertising frames, mirrors and pictures in frames, wood stair rods, overmantles, etc, and from 1936 as fancy goods manufacturers in the Post Office London directory.
Bennett & Jennison advertised swept frames, antique gilt frames for artists and exhibitions, offering lists and moulding patterns on application, describing themselves as the largest frame and moulding works in Great Britain (The Year’s Art 1930). By 1951 the business was offering exhibition frames for artists in ‘Antique Gilt or Ivory and oxidised silver’, offering a new list, no.103 (The Artist’s Guide, 1951; see also The Artist, vol.41, April 1951, p.xi). The company was listed to be struck off the Companies Register in 1957 (London Gazette 18 October 1957).
*Jabez Benson, 28 Warwick St, Golden Square, London 1826-1828, 39 Warwick St 1829-1858, not listed 1859-1860, 20 Broad St, Golden Square 1861. Looking glass and picture framemaker.
Jabez Benson (c.1804-1864) was listed in the 1841 census as a framemaker, in 1851 as a carver and gilder, age 47, address 29 Warwick Square, and in 1861 at 62 Warwick St. He is probably the individual of this name who married twice at St James Westminster, firstly in 1827 to Mary Wilkinson, and then in 1834 to Caroline Osbourn. He died in 1864, described as a carver and gilder of 20 Wardour St, leaving effects worth under £300; his will was proved by his widow Caroline and his son Alexander George, barrister’s clerk.
Benson framed two portrait drawings for Adam Buck, Sarah Wright-Hewell, 1827, and Young boy and his two sisters, 1830 (Christie’s South Kensington, Interiors, 1 May 2012 lot 325, and Sotheby's 26 November 1998 lot 18). Both frames bear his trade label describing him as nephew and successor to the late Mr Gravel. This was Robert Gravel, who worked at 28 Warwick St from 1809 until his death in 1824 (DEFM).
For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
Found a mistake? Have some extra information? Please contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
Related resources
Keep in touch
