Designed by Stanford White (1853-1906) c. 1900

Original period frames designed by the pre-eminent American architect Stanford White are extremely rare, and large ones of aesthetic design with original gilding are rarer yet. With its cast openwork outer diaper border and its symmetrically arranged inner face rope, this frame is similar to the original Stanford White frame on Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s 1902 painting, “The Spinet,” now at the National Museum of American Art. The fish scale pattern on the broad ogee of the present frame is, however, more elaborate than the simple cyma of the Dewing example. This superlative imbricated frame of characteristic one-piece construction is handsome and, with an opening size of 36 ¼” x 30 ¼” is also quite useful.

DESCRIPTION: 

Wood, composition and gold gilding. The wide sloping fish scale field of the imbricated frame surmounted by a fascia rope half-round and flanked by an outer border of diaper pattern. Shown with modern, beveled glass mirror.

EXHIBITED: “A Change of Taste: From the Gilded Age to the Craftsman Aesthetic,” Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company, Inc., NY, January 24 – April 15, 2011.

CONDITION: 

As-found surface of original gilded finish; minor in-fill in rear rabbet. Modern mirror glass.

LITERATURE: 

See Hobbs, Susan, The Art of Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Beauty Reconfigured. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1996, p. 84, fig. 54, for a detail of a related original Stanford White frame on Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s 1902 painting, “The Spinet.”

SIZE: 51” x 44 ½”outer size; 36-1/4” x 30-1/4” inner opening

CALL NUMBER: 106-III-Af