Icon Frame

A Russian (probably) religious icon frame, with lovely distressed and aged gilding, not sure of age, I would guess around 18th C.

Cherepovets Art Museum

A selection of paintings and frames seen in Cherepovets Art Museum, in Russia. As is common with every museum I have ever visited in Russia, a mixture of fine original frames, hideous modern mass produced frames, and completely unsuitable frames. The stand out painting in this museum for me is by one of the greatest Russian painters; Ivan Shishkin's Edge of a Forest, which is sadly framed in a mass produced modern frame that would be OK for a print of the painting but not the original, for all I know the original frame maybe being restored and this is a temporary surround, but in my experience I doubt it. Still a nicely presented little art gallery.

 Muse by N.L. Tyutryumov 1821-1877

 Young Girl by I.K. Makarov 1822-1897

 Girl Ironing by K.E. Makovsky 1839-1915

 Foreigners' Arrival in Russia by K.A. Veshchilov 1877-1930

 Popovka Landscape with Forest and Rye Field by Y.Y. Clever 1850-1924

 Edge of a Forest by Ivan Shishkin 1832-1898

 Shishkin frame detail...

Museum of Vasily Vereshchagin.

The Museum of Vasily Vereshchagin in the city of Cherepovets, Russia, is located in the painter's family home and an adjacent building. A truly great painter who had a real interest in framing his work, with some quite distinct frame styles, some of which were made to his detailed designs. Sadly only 10 small oil sketches are on display in the museum, out of a lifetime's work of over 2000 paintings, with only a few in original frames. The artist was good friends with Pavel Tretyakov who purchased many of his paintings. Vereshchagin's home museum is modest but very interesting, and the attendants gave a lot of additional information about his life and work. Here are two paintings with original frames, the first frame is on a painting at Kyoto Temple, and features Japanese themed ornament of dragons, and what look like cherry blossoms, and other foliage. This frame really deserves to be restored. The second frame on a painting of Mount Elbrus, is a quite common Vereshchagin design, with elaborate scrolling carved ornament, sadly overpainted and also worthy of restoration.

A more European frame can be seen on this painting below of a peasant girl. I call this a French Second Empire fluted cove frame, although I understand from a leading American frame expert that in the US they call it a Greek revival frame. This frame looks to also be original:

This painting of a camel is lovely, although the frame does not look that original to me...

Russian flea market

On the same site as the market selling frames, paintings, and lots of other items mentioned in my previous post, was a large flea market which was full of antiques. There were lots of icons, gilded objects, and all sorts of antique frames, from ordinary ones to some amazing examples. I could have spent days looking through the stalls, so will definitely be visiting this place again! The only downside was the crazy Moscow prices, some of which were double the price I would have valued the frames at, these prices could be haggled, but were still rather expensive.

Russian frame market

I have just come back from Moscow, where I visited a large market which had lots of different stalls, including a lot of frame stalls, and many old and new paintings for sale. This is wear Muscovites come for a bargain frame, with lots of pretty typical profiles that we see in England, from some quite nice mouldings to lots of mass produced tacky looking rubbish. My favourite stall was selling natural wood frames which could be painted, stained, waxed, or gilded.