The Frame as Art

Restored frame, dates from late 1800s-early 1900s.

There are some occasions where the frame is as much a work of art as the painting or illustration it holds.
Nowadays there is a lot of plastic in frames, they’re too shiny and lightweight. I like old things, and I love old frames, and I have been known to tinker with and restore both.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, heavy and handcrafted “gilt gesso” frames were very popular. A very thin coating of gold was applied to wood or porcelain. Gilding gave the impression of richness at a fraction of the cost.

As it came home, crud and all, missing pieces.

This frame certainly did not look rich when I brought it home. It came from a yard sale, sat in a barn for a couple of years, and then remained unsold at yet another yard sale. It then spent time in the elements out on a porch.
All of the tacks holding it together had rusted through. Pieces of decorative gilt had fallen off, crumbled or gotten loose.  Many chunks were missing.

Washing it made even more chunks fall off.

But the frame was flat, the edges were intact and the glass was intact. I could see that it could be beautiful again.
It wasn’t easy, and it took a long time.

I decided to scrape off all of the trim and save the good pieces.

First I used dish soap and a bucket of water to loosen and wash away the dirt and cobwebs. After a while I could see the remaining gold overlay and the finished wood, which still looked decent, amazingly.
More and more pieces fell off, though.  So many that I wound up taking a kitchen knife and prying them all off, collecting the puzzle-like pieces in a baggie.

Turned these pieces on their side and glued them on.

A little research and a few hunches lead me to believe this frame is from 1880.
The frame is actually three frames that fit together — outer, middle and inner. I turned it over and glued them all back together.

Back view: The frames within the frame.

 

Glue and pieces.

Meanwhile, I let the pieces dry out for a few days and then set about trying to salvage the trim. The problem was that there were simply not enough pieces to go around the outer and inner parts of the frame.

The modeling clay, which turned out to be the wrong kind. Ugh!

For the outer frame, I turned the little “apostrophe” pieces on their side, figuring this would elongate them and fill out the space.  But I still ran short, so used modeling clay to craft replacements for the missing parts.  I heavily glued them onto the wood.

Molding pieces and gluing a pattern together.

For the inner frame, there was just too much damage.  The original trim could never be replicated from my baggie full of crumbled plaster. My solution was to save the biggest, most intact pieces and space them out evenly in some semblance of a pattern.  This worked to a point but there was still too much dead space between the pieces. It looked like macaroni glued to a paper plate!

Glue and filler.

I wound up using glass bits from Dollar General to fill in between the chunks. I sprinkled them onto a bed of glue, and once that dried, used a paint brush to spread more glue over the entire inner frame to hold it together.
Elmer’s All-Purpose glue and GE silicone caulk got a real workout here, and the frame is super solid now.
 

Ready to fill in.

 

I decided to use a hammered copper spray paint to coat the outer and inner frame, and masked off the middle wood to keep it as original as possible.  The copper paint coated and filled in the glued-on pieces -- 10 coats!-- and camouflaged the homemade bits, and by design pulled together the inner and outer frames.

Glass pieces along the inner rim.

But there was a problem: The paint would not dry on the modeling clay. It stayed sticky and even pulled off! Potential disaster. But I brushed Elmer's glue over the tacky spots, let that dry and painted the copper over them again -- this time, with a small brush. That did the trick. 

More glue brushed on, to hold everything tight.

Next disaster: The masking tape pulled off some of the old wood stain, making the exposed wood look really beat up.  So I carefully brushed on some new, dark acrylic paint (brown-black-sienna) and then wiped it in and off. Looks much better.

Masked and sprayed.

Even the glass was problematic.  It’s an old, heavy glass — definitely lead oxide glass. It's wavy and full of bubbles. And nothing would cut through all of the filth, including lethal concoctions of heavy chemistry (xylene, goo-gone, Dawn, alcohol etc.). I thought of replacing it, but using a cheap, modern thin glass pane just seemed wrong.

The wood before brushing on new stain.

Finally a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser allowed for noticeable improvement after five go-arounds. It's not perfect, it's antiqued!
Getting the glass back in was tight and required a little whittling.

Waiting for it to dry!

This was a great project, though difficult and time-consuming, and I am very excited about the results.

Applying a wash of the acrylic paint.

The rubdown!

This frame is designed to match perfectly a piece that is already completed — another frankly mind-blowing project for me (perhaps my most complex to date) that I will reveal after Christmas.
Stay tuned.