The Framers Forum

This is a about a recent job I did to frame a set of twelve original Hogarth prints.

The customer was restoring an 18th cent. house and had several sets of Hogarth prints which were to be hung within a period setting.

The first set of prints was a series of twelve called "Industry and Idleness" and charts the differing careers to two apprentices, one industrious who progresses to become lord mayor of London, the other a bit idle and less fortunate, ending up hung at Tyburn.


The prints had been historically trimmed close to the image so then had to be float mounted in order to show all of the image. In this instance I floated them on to a raised piece of mountboard and squared up the whole assembly with a narrow internal water gilded slip. This also served to separate the paper from the glass.
Where the underlying mountboard was visible in the background, I coloured it with watercolours to match with the tone of the prints.




The frames are best described as 18th century Hogarth sanded slip frames. The inner section is a flat pine frame on which a compo ornament is laid and surrounded with an area of sanded texture. To press out compo castings for one or two frames is fun enough. To do it for a series of twelve is a day spent grinding away with some grim determination.



The whole was then given a coat of gesso and oil gilded over a yellow base.

The outer section was made from ebonised fruitwood, distressed toned and waxed. I used fruitwood because it has a very close grain which polishes beautifully and requires no filling or priming. However, fruitwood is very expensive and the way to do it is to cut thin slats of the fruitwood and glue these onto a pine base - a good old R&H pine stretcher. Then the profile is cut into the top surface of the fruitwood and the remaining base wood trimmed to form the rest of the moulding. And this is actually the way the original frames were produced.


For the glazing, I used reclaimed antique picture glass as this had loads of interesting blisters and imperfections.

Hi Dermot,

WOW! Those are beautiful, just really nice! What a nice job! Really well done!

I do quite a bit of older looking stuff, but I work to a less demanding standard, it's a case of having too, and particularly since my stroke, it makes a lot of sense to work within my limitations. However, I still manage to do things which impress the customers. Some of my finishes are just painted, or painted and washed, then waxed. For speed I set the wax, using my hot air gun, which results in a very even smooth wax finish and is also great for hiding any slight gaps here and there.

A lot of my older looking stuff is produced using stacked mouldings and this often can look quite like real antique frames. I like too produce some of these older looking frames in pairs, or even in sets, with old bookplate type prints framed within these frames. Old nursery rhyme prints in sets seem to sell quite well. There's alway a lady who wants stuff like that for her homes nursery, or childrens bedrooms. I find that ladies often go for the old fashioned, victorian style stuff. It's very rare that men buy anything like this these days, although they used to at one time, but that was a long time ago!

Thanks Mark.

They want a load more - I should be happy ..
but it's going to be a week of squeezing out compo.

Beautiful job Dermot. Thanks for posting.

Nick

Thanks Nick.

Really pleased you found it interesting.

That's just a stunning piece of work Very nice indeed

Thankyou.
Much appreciated.

Looks great Dermot!

Thanks Matt.
You should show more of your ripple and tabernacle frames. Really innovative work.

Thanks Dermot.

I've been quite busy recently with plenty of interesting projects. I'll post something now.

Matt