British picture framemakers, 1630-1950 - B part 2
Contributions are welcome, to Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
Cross-references to other makers are indicated by adding '(qv)' after the relevant name.
Resources and bibliography
*John Brydon, 48 Brewer St, London 1780, 7 Charing Cross 1783-1801, 4 Charing Cross 1800-1805, 218 Oxford St 1805-1808. Printseller, print publisher, carver and gilder, picture framemaker, looking glass warehouse.
In 1780 John Brydon, carver and gilder, took out an insurance policy at 48 Brewer St with the Sun Fire Office. He was trading from Charing Cross by 1783. Brydon advertised looking glasses, glass and picture frames and girandoles in 1784 (Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser 12 February 1784). He also offered prints for sale from his ‘Looking-glass and Print Warehouse, opposite Northumberland-house, Charing-cross', which he also described as his ‘Exhibition Room' (The Times 10 November 1792, 19 January 1793). He distributed prints for Valentine Green from as early as 1783 (Clayton 1997 p.220; see also J.C. Smith p.592, BM Satires no.8243); Green's Duchess of Rutland was altered and republished in 1793 by Charlotte Brydon, 7 Charing Cross, as the Duchess of York (J.C. Smith p.583).
Brydon was responsible for framing Guy Head's full-length portrait, Viscount Nelson with a Midshipman, 1798-9 (National Portrait Gallery), for Nelson himself who wrote to Emma Hamilton on 8 February 1801, 'I hope Mr Brydon has executed the frames to your satisfaction' (Simon 1996 p.166). Indeed, when advertising his forthcoming set of engravings of the Battle of the Nile in April 1799, Brydon claimed Nelson's patronage, and his permission to dedicate the prints to him (Sun 30 April 1799).
In 1800 Brydon thanked his patrons for their favours received over the previous 18 years, and advertised that he had opened a house for furnishing funerals at 4 Charing Cross, where J. Brydon junr was in attendance (The Times 5 June 1800). Brydon was listed as a bankrupt in 1801 as William Brydon (The Times 17 June 1801), but in subsequent reports he was named as John Brydon. His extensive stock-in-trade as a bankrupt was advertised for sale, including paintings, drawings, engravings, copperplates, paper, printing presses and picture frames (The Times 3 September 1801), as was the lease of his ‘substantial' house and shop, the premises described as upwards of 50 feet deep and four storeys high, at a rental of £150 a year (The Times 14 September 1801). He continued to make payments to creditors until 5 June 1804 (Maxted 1977 p.33). The business was listed as Brydon & Co, print merchant, 1802-1805, in some directories.
Sources: Maxted 1977 (giving the address, 7 Charing Cross in 1783); Guildhall Library, Records of Sun Fire Office, vol.289 no.436154, see DEFM, and note also an earlier policy, vol.257 no.383803, from 1777, for John Brydon, broker, at Great Windmill St, Golden Square. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
*Buck & Scott 1876-1881, F.C. Buck 1881-1928, F.C. Buck & Son 1929-1962. At 76 Wigmore St, London W 1876-1888, factory 12 Marylebone Lane 1879-1880, pemises renumbered 1880/1, 48 Marylebone Lane 1881-1890, 59 Wigmore St 1889-1900, 78 Baker St 1897-1900, 21 Baker St 1900-1923, 48 Baker St 1924-1962. Carvers and gilders, later fine art dealers.
Frederick Charles Buck (1850-1929) was born in Hackney in 1850 and died at the age of 79 in the Hampstead registration district in 1929. He was initially in partnership with Alfred Robert Scott, trading as Buck & Scott at 76 Wigmore St but this partnership was dissolved on 1 January 1881 (London Gazette 1 February 1881). He was recorded in the 1881 census as carver and gilder, age 30, at 76 Wigmore St, in 1891 at 78 Baker St, in 1901 living at 93 Finchley Rd with two sons and in 1911 as a fine art dealer and picture framemaker with his eldest son, Charles Frederick, age 20, assisting in the business. He is possibly the Frederick Charles Buck referred to in a court case concerning his father's will in 1900 (The Times 26 June 1900).
The premises at 78 Baker St seem to have been used for trading in antique furniture. The business was listed in the Post Office London directory as fine art dealer by 1924 and antique picture frame dealer by 1941. F.C. Buck & Son's invoice paper in 1938 describes the business as 'Dealer in Antique Furniture, Works of Art', specifying 'Chromos, Prints, Drawings &c Mounted, Pictures Cleaned, Lined & Restored, Looking Glasses & Picture Frames Cleaned or Regilded' (example in National Portrait Gallery records, RP1935).
The business supplied frames or materials for works by some well-known artists. Frederick Sandys's small panel, Hero, 1871, has the label, 'Prepared panel. Fredk. C. Buck. Dealer in Works of Art. Frame Maker. Wigmore St. London' (Elzea 2001 p.240). Frederick Buck was mentioned by William Holman Hunt in a letter, 1898, and he made the now lost frame for Hunt's The Miracle of Sacred Fire in the Church of the Sepulchre, exh.1899 (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge). The aedicular frame on Hunt's The Beloved, 1898 (Royal Collection) is said to have been made by Buck to the artist's design (Millar 1992 p.126: repr. Bronkhurst 2006 p.323). It is one of Hunt's symbolic frames, incorporating pomegranates and mignonette, in a Renaissance scrolling design which would have been a test of the carver's skill.
The collector, George Salting, purchased picture frames from Buck, 1881-1909, of which the most expensive was a carved French swept frame for a Ruysdael painting in 1903 (Guildhall Library, MS.19742, 19747, Salting papers).
Philip de László used Buck as a source for old frames, for example in 1923, according to recent research into the De Laszlo archive (National Portrait Gallery), which is currently being catalogued. When de László's portrait of Victor, 9th Duke of Devonshire, 1927-8 (Chatsworth) was copied in 1928, the artist recommended Buck as a dealer in old frames as one of two framemakers for the job but it was Emile Remy (qv) who got the commission on price (see Philip de Laszlo and picture framing on the National Portrait Gallery website).
In 1931 the business supplied the National Gallery with an old frame for a picture by Moretto (NG 299), since removed from this work.
For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
George Buckingham, New Bond St, London, 24 New St, Dorset Square 1851. Carver and gilder. A candidate for the next edition of this Directory, to include additional 19th and 20th-century framemakers. Contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk.
*A.E. Burling, 121 Great Portland St, London W 1897-1899, street renumbered 1899, 101 Great Portland St 1899-1900. Carver and gilder, picture framemaker and mount cutter.
Albert Edward Burling (b.1872) was born in Notting Hill. At the time of the 1891 census, he and his older brother James were recorded as picture framemakers living as lodgers at 113 Upper St, Islington. Albert Edward married in 1892 in the Islington registration district. He had set up in partnership as a picture framer by 1897, advertising in 1898 ‘Green Stained Oaks or Special Patterns made to Customers' requirements', as well as ‘French, Chippendale, Swept and Louis Frames in English Gold' (The Year's Art 1898), but the following year on 31 May 1899 this partnership, with Ernest Walter Wesson, trading as A.E. Burling at 101 Great Portland St, was dissolved (London Gazette 29 September 1899). In the 1911 census, he was living in Walthamstow, as a picture frame maker (worker) with his wife and son, also Albert Edward, a cabinet maker.
There were other businesses going by the name of Burling, connection unknown, trading in frames at this time. Burling & Weatherall, picture framemakers, were listed at 99 Talbot Road W, 1895-9, and Burling & Co, picture framemakers, at 103 Talbot Road, 1899. James Burling, picture framer, age 30, was listed at 15 Theberton St, Islington, in the 1901 census.
*James Byfield 1777-1790, James and Thomas Byfield 1790-1799, Thomas and James Byfield 1802, James Byfield 1805-1808, Thomas Byfield 1809-1828, T.B. Byfield 1822-1824, T.B. Byfield & Son 1823-1827, James Byfield 1829-1834. At Wardour St (corner of Holland St), Soho, London 1777, 16 Wardour St 1785-1793, Compton St 1795-1799, 39 Old Compton St 1802-1828, 37 Old Compton St 1819-1834, 11 Richmond Buildings, Soho Square 1836, 9 Richmond Buildings 1837-1840. Carvers and gilders.
This carving and gilding business in Soho, begun by James Byfield in or before 1777, was continued over more than one generation, with a relative, Thomas, in partnership by 1790, and another James continuing the business subsequently.
James Byfield took out insurance with the Sun Fire Office in January 1777 as a carver and gilder at the corner of Holland St in Wardour St. ‘Mr Byfield', Compton St, attended a meeting in 1795 of fifteen consumers and manufacturers of leaf gold which resolved to resist an attempt by journeymen goldbeaters to increase their labour charges (The Times 22 December 1795). It has been suggested by Judith Butler that this carver and gilder was James Byfield (d.1813), who had six children by his wife, Susannah, between 1788 and 1800, christened at St Mary Marylebone, or at Providence Chapel, Great Titchfield St, three of whom became wood engravers, John, Ebenezer and Mary, and the youngest, James, born 1800, who may have followed his father as a carver and gilder. However, it is recorded that two of these children were born at 17 Winchester St, Clerkenwell, making it difficult to sustain the link with James Byfield the carver and gilder.
Thomas Byfield, in partnership by 1790, may have been a brother or nephew. He was carver and gilder to His Majesty, following on from William Robert Adair (qv), who died in 1807. He is recorded in the Royal Household accounts, 1808-27, supplying frames for official portraits for ambassadors (DEFM). In 1825, Thomas Byfield attended a meeting of more than fifty master carvers and gilders who resolved to resist the demands of journeymen for an increase in wages (The Times 30 June 1825).
James Byfield the younger continued the business from the late 1820s. He may be the individual in the 1841 census recorded as a carver and gilder, age 37, and who was listed as a composition ornament maker at 5 George Yard, 23 Crown St, Soho, in 1841 and who advertised his stock of looking glass and picture frames, stating that he had been several years mould carver to Messrs Jackson (qv) and to Messrs Criswick & Ryan (qv) (The Times 12 February 1841). In the 1851 census he appears as a carver and gilder, age 48, employing 3 men and a boy. Some of the Byfield frame moulds were auctioned by Criswick, according to the sale details (The Times 9 February 1863)
Sources: Guildhall Library, Records of Sun Fire Office, vol.254 no.379756; Judith Butler, ‘Ingenious and Worthy Family: The Byfields', The Private Library, 3rd series, vol.3, 1980, pp.149-50. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
Found a mistake? Have some extra information? Who should be added to this directory? Please contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
