British picture framemakers 1750-1950

A selective directory of framemakers and carvers and gilders, who produced frames for identified artists or who advertised extensively in art periodicals. Many worked in London but others were based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge and Bath. For the numerous other framemakers at work and for earlier framemakers, information can be found in the Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840 (1986), Jacob Simon, The Art of the Picture Frame (1996), Laura Houliston, 'Frame Making in Edinburgh 1790-1830', Regional Furniture, vol.13 (1999) and John Stabler, Norfolk Furniture Makers 1700-1840, Regional Furniture Society (2006).

First edition, November 2007. It is proposed to update this directory annually, and to include the more important missing makers, especially those dating to before 1750. Contributions may be sent to Jacob Simon, National Portrait Gallery, London WC2H 0HE, e-mail jsimon@npg.org.uk.

Format of individual entries
Names, business addresses, dates. Nature of business. Business and biographical information, connections with individual patrons and artists, including documented and marked frames.
Note: addresses are taken from annual publications such as trade directories or periodicals except where monthly or daily publications or precisely dated documents are available. No adjustment has been made to street addresses to allow for the situation that many directories were compiled late in the year preceding the title date. This means that a supplier may have begun and ended business a year earlier than indicated here. Overlaps and gaps in date sequences for addresses reflect the availability of evidence. Many streets were renamed and sometimes renumbered in the 19th century and this is indicated in the listings.

Sources: see Bibliography and resources.

Acknowledgements
This Directory was compiled by Jacob Simon with assistance from Lynn Roberts. Thanks to Edgar Harden for information on makers' labels and James Yorke for providing access to the V&A Furniture Dept Archive. At the National Portrait Gallery, thanks to many colleagues, including Richard Hallas and Tim Moreton, and more recently Seraphina Coffmann and Heather Tilley, with voluntary help coming from two curatorial interns, Chloe Evans and Susanna Walker, and in the mid-1990s from Margaret Binney and Michèle Riley. Grateful acknowledgements are made to the descendants of various framemakers and to other researchers acknowledged by name in individual entries. Further study is needed of centres outside London, on the model of work already undertaken on Edinburgh and Norfolk makers.

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All images and text are subject to copyright protection. 22 November 2008