FRAME COLLECTIONS
highlights of our line
Modernist Collection
This selection of painting and drawing frames has been chosen for our Modernist Collection and reflects the best of the designs that have come to our attention over the years. The early 20th Century brought revolutionary changes in the visual arts, and the art of framing responded to these new trends by moving away from the carved, ornamented frame. The new frame aesthetic emphasized the use of shape, line and finish to complement the new directions in modern art.
These historically accurate profiles represent decades of collaboration between APF MUNN, artists, designers, and curators from all over the world.
These frame designs reflect a diversity of proportions and finishes, and all can be modified to meet your individual needs.
Drawing & Painting Frames
This Drawing & Painting Frame Collection offers the styles favored by world renowned designers and collectors and features high quality frames of such distinct beauty that they are an art form in themselves.
All the frames detailed are re-creations of important designs from major periods. They were chosen to enhance a broad range of works, including old prints, drawings and paintings as well as contemporary art.
Each of our frames is individually custom made to your specifications, using the finest woods and traditional materials. Hand crafted and hand finished, the Frame Collection features appropriate corner ornaments and genuine gold leaf combined to produce truly unique museum quality frames.
American Collections
While contemporary European styles had an important influence on frames in Colonial America, domestic designs were generally simple in nature. Typical Colonial shapes were plain shapes were plain coves or slopes, often derived from architectural mouldings.
As skilled carvers and gilders settled in America in increasing numbers, frames became ever more sophisticated. Designs of the Federal Period were influenced by the contemporary interest in neo-classical style in Europe and America, with low relief ornamentation echoing the architectural and decorative motifs of classical antiquity. Because the styles are so similar and often indistinguishable, we have grouped the French Empire frames with the Federal.
Advances in manufacturing techniques allowed frames in the nineteenth century to become increasingly complex, with realistically three dimensional cast or moulded ornamentation appearing with great frequency. This decoration was often inspired by agrarian or nature themes, with leaves, branches, cornhusks, and vines used as common motifs.
In the late 1800s, frames were often individual products rather than being mass produced. Several prominent artists, notably James Whistler and Thomas Eakins designed their own frames. The American impressionists Twachtman, Weir, and Hassam, among others, developed and shared a distinctive style, combining subtle shapes and carvings with subdued finishes, often in pale golds, to compliment their work.
English Frames
English frame design in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shows a distinct style in combination with an influence from abroad. Characteristic is a tendency toward Rococo, as typified by Chippendale, but elements associated with French, Dutch, Italian, and Oriental design trends commonly appear.
Dutch Frames
Dutch and Flemish styles are typified by rich wood finishes in composite shapes, often with basket weave and ripple designs. Dark, ebony effects were popular, and tortoise shell and burl veneers saw frequent application.
Louis Frames
Louis XIII, XIV, XV, & XVI period frames.
Spanish Frames
The development of Spanish frames of the Renaissance closely followed that of the Italian, but perhaps because of a remoteness from the classic artifacts abounding in Italy as models, the Spanish craftsmen tended to develop versions of decorative ornament that became uniquely Spanish. By the 17th Century, the styles which might once have been called “provincial” were now, in themselves, designs of forceful vitality, often showing Moorish or Middle Eastern influence.
Italian Frames
The use of an ornamental border to surround a picture dates well into antiquity. The age of the Gothic, as it developed in Italy, saw the change of the concept of painting as strictly a wall decoration to that of the painting as an object in itself. Framemaking became an art form in itself. The later advent of the more secular, easel painting brought on the gradual specializations of the painter and the framemaker, although into the 15th and 16th centuries, and later, painters would still be making their own frames or working closely with the frame craftsman. Early frame forms were often architectonic in nature. Derived from architectural styles, they exhibit in their designs the classical gothic elements so familiar to artisans of 15th Century Italy.
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