How to Frame Pictures 
is best. The same rules will apply to prints. With 
water-colors, the mat plays an important part. A 
strong, vigorous water-color is richer in effect in a 
bronze mat; a delicate aquarelle is best suited to a 
white mat. The frame for a water-color, as in the 
case of an etching, may be the simplest sort of flat 
or rounded moulding, and with a white mat, may 
be in white or gold, but, with a gold mat, it should 
also be in gold. This may be a natural wood gilded, 
as chestnut for example, or a more expensive fire 
gilt or leaf. There are numerous varieties of simple 
Florentine or lacework patterns that are in good 
taste, but any sort of ornament that is shoddy in 
finish will most certainly tend to cheapen the appear¬ 
ance of the picture. A very good oil may appear of 
little value in a cheap-look¬ 
ing frame, while on the 
other hand, a mediocre pic¬ 
ture may be much enhanced 
in a thoroughly good frame. 
The writer has seen in 
the galleries of the Vesey 
street firm a display of 
water-colors framed close, 
as one would frame an oil. 
Without mats of any 
description, they were 
extremely effective as were 
also sundry little sketches 
framed as “thumb bits,” 
in Whistler patterns. Here 
also were well-executed 
studies and canvases framed 
in the popularCarton-Pierre 
designs, substitutes for 
higb-pricedgold leaf frames, 
and, because of their depth, 
particularly well adapted for 
landscapes. Metal leaf, 
practically as effective and 
as durable as gold, is used 
on the flat surfaces, the cor¬ 
ners and ornaments only, being finished in burn¬ 
ished gold. This “Dutch Metal,” combined with 
the method of manufacturing the design, reduces 
the cost from one-third to a full half. As an example, 
one may purchase a beautiful Carton-Pierre frame 
with shadow box and glass for a ten by fourteen 
inch canvas at ^lo or ^12. This means a frame of 
fairly good size, its outside proportions approxima¬ 
ting about twenty-two by twenty-six inches. 
A shadow box is manifold in its usefulness. It 
not only protects tbe frame, but it gives deeper, 
richer effect, and isolates the picture from sur¬ 
rounding objects. The French Sweep frame, a 
reproduction of the old Louis XIV. and XVI. 
periods, is not only beautiful in its variety of designs, 
but is also inexpensive. The material of this frame 
is of wood covered with composition ornaments 
accurately pressed in box-wood or brass moulds, and 
it is not to be distinguished from the original patterns 
of priceless value. The use of metal leaf where pos¬ 
sible means a saving of no little proportion. 
One finds in such large frame and picture estab¬ 
lishments as the one mentioned, designs for mould¬ 
ings in rosewood and mahogany, suitable for prints 
and mirrors, and even for oils (if a thin strip of 
gold is allowed to show next the picture) to complete 
the furnishings of a Colonial room. There are also 
many varieties of mouldings in natural wood, all well 
suited for prints and hlack and whites, or toned 
papers, such as the several popular finishes of 
stained oak, the greens, browns, weathered and 
Flemish; ebony, chestnut, 
native walnut and the beau¬ 
tiful Circassian walnut, so 
much in vogue at present. 
We also find the “Copley 
brown” for prints that are 
always a thousand times 
better in taste than poor 
paintings or the atrocious 
cheap crayon portrait. 
It is occasionally possible 
to restore an old frame that 
has grown black with age, 
if the ornaments are still in 
good preservation. But 
frame makers use a differ¬ 
ent quality of bronze than 
that which finds its way 
into the household to be 
used in “beautifying” the 
radiator. Let some expe¬ 
rienced person do the restor¬ 
ing. There are delightful 
tones in bronze which 
include every shade of gold, 
copper or silver, and after 
being applied, may be toned 
even lower and the surface given the appearance 
of an antique. 
Effective frames have been made of roughly sawed 
timber mitered to give a deep bevel, then given a 
coat of shellac and finished with a coat of bronze. 
Burned wood patterns generally have this fault, that 
with the deep burning and the brilliant stains em¬ 
ployed the frame is far too important. We repro¬ 
duce two designs, in which the flat wood surface has 
been lightly worked over with a graver’s tool, giving 
a delicate tracing of leaf patterns, then bronzed in a 
dull tone, the effect being really charming and entirely 
consistent with the picture. Where glass is used for 
protection, it is advisable always to use the best 
quality. French glass is preferable to the domestic as 
it is more colorless and more free from imperfections. 
“french sweep” frame W’IFH built up corners 
47 
