Finished Vintage Frame Repair

A finished frame repair, some earlier photos can be seen in a previous post.

Restored Watercolour Frame

This 19th Century watercolour frame has just been repaired and restored. It had numerous losses to the ornament, and had been overpainted, it had also been gilded a couple of times. It has been cut down to fit a smaller painting, the composition missing has been replaced, and it has been regilded.

Round Mirror Frame

This 18th/19th Century round mirror frame had many layers of later applied gilding and paint, here it is being stripped and a more original gold leaf finish will be restored. This is another frame for the Belmont project.

Flaking gilding

This mid to late 20th C repro gilded English hollow frame, or Morland frame as they are sometimes called, has large sections of the oil gilding flaking away on the hollow section. This could be for a number of reasons, the rest of the gilding seems fine, just this one section that has failed.

Centre repair

The finished repair to a damaged swept frame centre ornament.

Last damaged frame...

The last damaged frame to come into the workshop today, was this Victorian Neoclassical frame. It has numerous small areas that need repairing, but overal the condition is relatively good.

Another damaged frame

This Scottish made antique swept frame has various areas of damage to the composition ornament. I like the design of this frame, especially the large leaves at the centres which are more realistic/organic looking than many designs.

Frame damage

A swept frame with typical transit/shipping damage, one of the centres has been knocked off. Unfortunately the missing section was lost, which is a shame as it would have saved some time and made the repair much easier. 

Composition repairs

Split rebate repair

The rebate on this frame was badly split along two sides. The wood is just particularly thin on this part of the frame and it does not take much pressure from the back to split the rebate, in this case just transporting and stacking pictures on top of each other was enough to do the damage.

A typical repair

This English style swept frame has some damage to one corner, which is being repaired.

Finished repair

Louis XIV repairs

These two carved Louis XIV corner and centre frames were shipped to me to have some minor repairs done on just one of them, but they were not very well packed and got pretty badly damaged during the journey over from France. The top frame is not so bad, but the lower frame is trashed and will need some work.

Repairs to Watts

This Watts frame is from a few posts back, it has had some repairs done, and been generally tidied up. A nice detail that you don't see on all Watts frames is the inner husk ornament has centre flowers which the husks radiate away from, instead of just going round the same way. It would be nice if the outer ornament had mitre leaves, although the ornament does match up very well without them. Finally butt joints on the oak veneer flat are another good detail although this one has normal mitres.

Gesso filling

This 20th Century water gilded frame has suffered from gesso flaking away on the exposed high part of the moulding. It has been sanded back a little, and the loose pieces of gesso removed, next the exposed areas were brushed with hot rabbit skin glue.

Gesso consolidation

This boldly shaped bevel moulding is an example of an individually designed profile, made by the famous London framer Robert Sielle. I have repaired a number frames by the same maker, surrounding paintings by the same artist over the years, all of which have been custom profiles and all similarly bold and individually crafted. The colour scheme is also a signature of the artist's work. It is a pleasure to work on frames from such a influential framer, and hopefully do my bit for preserving his original work.

The frame came in with some damage (possibly water damage) to one side, almost all the gesso on this side had flaked off or was badly delaminating. Several other areas of gesso on the exposed inner edge were also loose and flaking off, exposing the pine wood substrate. Gesso suffers from damp conditions and also the effects of central heating, resulting in weakening of the glue bond between layers and the wooden base.

I used an acrylic emulsion (Plextol B500) mixed with water and ethanol to stabilise and consolidate the fragile, powdery gesso and all exposed gesso areas. I then built up the missing areas of gesso using a standard rabbit skin glue/calcium carbonate mixture. The sides, bevel, and inner slip of the frame all have a stippled gesso finish, (not the high point which is quite flat and without texture) so this effect was replicated on the side as I built up the new gesso layers. The small infills of gesso were sanded smooth, and then the new gesso areas were painted to match the surrounding original finish - easily the hardest part of the whole process.

Robert Sielle made frames for many of the leading 20th century British artists, detailed information can be read on the National Portrait Gallery website: British Picture Framemakers 1610-1950.
Sir Kyffin Williams used him for about 35 years, some insights into the relationship between artist and framer can be read on the Alice Sielle website: Sir Kyffin Williams on Alice Sielle.

Repairs to a frame

The repairs to this frame still need to have the detail sharpened and the edges/joins tidied up and blended in with the original ornament. The repairs can then be painted with bole and gilded.

A few repairs in progress

Repairs waiting to be done

A line of frames waiting to be repaired and restored next week. I intend to build some sort of drying/storage racking in this part of the workshop, another job for the list of things to do. It is quite a big space which could easily take a large rack for storing frames as they dry.

Little repairs part 3.