The Frame Blog

framemaker, dealer, restorer and connoisseur of Basel
(1957-2022)
by his son Robert Knöll, and by Peter Schade of the National Gallery

The Frame Blog: We have lost Thomas Knöll, your father, much too early; his innate understanding of the historical and aesthetic bonds of paintings and frames created a treasure-house of frames which has been of immeasurable value to museums around the world. His gallery and storerooms must have been an extraordinary place to grow up in?

Robert Knöll: Absolutely, it was; even though from the inside, it was a perfectly ordinary setting for us – the natural habitat from early childhood for both me and my older brother Carlo. It was only later, in adolescence, that we started to realize that this wasn’t exactly the norm, and it was even later that I really understood how unique the niche was that my father lived and worked in. The frame is probably one of the bigger blind spots in the artworld, both in the curatorial and art historical realm.

And we always had artworks in our private home, from Gothic Madonnas to contemporary art; we even had for a couple of years (although we weren’t really aware of it then) a beautiful terracotta relief which Thomas had found, and installed in our bedroom in Ticino. Much later the art historical consensus confirmed what he had known already: that it was a work by Donatello’s hand. I love that story, because it not only illustrates the idea of growing up with art (the Madonna on the wall watching over your sleep), but also my father’s approach – his  intimate relationship with objects, artworks, and of course frames, which was usually guided by purely sensuous instinct and intuition, and not primarily by intellectual study. That is, I suppose, rather rare.

TFB: Did you absorb his own passion for frames from the beginning, by watching him at work, or did he actively teach you the history of styles – how the frame evolved, and how its relationship  with a painting could radically alter the effect of the whole work?

RK: Yes, because my father never separated his work from his private life. I usually spent my free afternoons in the workshop, surrounded by the gilders’ tools.

However, when I think about the way that his knowledge was passed on, it’s clear to me that Thomas was not a teacher, but first and foremost an enthusiast. His enthusiasm was encapsulated in the art of seeing – of experiencing a given object actively, deeply and without preconceptions, whether it was a natural object or an artefact. So what we learned from him was not primarily didactic (in the sense of learning facts and terminology), but sensuous and aesthetic; he always succeeded in showing us where the intrinsic qualities of the profile, ornament, surface or patina of a frame lay, and how it could be an echo chamber for the work of art, picking up resonances in the painting.

This aesthetic skill was not intellectual but stemmed, rather, from a deep understanding and intimate knowledge of materials and craftmanship.

Also I’ve just realized this: antique frames were, and still are, the perfect training for the eye, because you cannot hide behind art historical knowledge. In most cases the frame is a completely nameless and anonymous creature, and you really cannot rely only on lectures, literature and institutional interpretation when deciding whether a frame is of great quality or not, or if it is original or a later copy. It’s much more a matter of experience, lateral vision and education, as well as taste; it’s not an exact science, but is firmly rooted in what used to be known as connoisseurship.

TFB: What are your earliest memories of your father at work?

RK: They are probably of him standing in front of his huge workshop table, showing me the thin pieces of gold leaf that loved to disengage from the brush and float around the dusty air of the workshop. If I had to find a Proustian madeleine moment in my childhood, it would probably be that.

TFB: Was he ever involved in the physical side of framemaking – in carving or gilding?

RK: Of course he was! Because he came from a family background of gilding, carving and craftsmanship, that was really his starting point in youth. And this is a crucial aspect for understanding frames: you cannot just approach them from the point of view of an aesthete, because you would become a victim of your own individual taste. Only if you thoroughly understand the craft and the materials involved do you know why a given frame has quality, whether it is original or not, and why it might be appropriate or not for a specific painting.

I have been in the workshop myself for the whole of my  life, but still technically I never learned the craft. While I am educated in art history, it is crucial for me to collaborate with my team of craftsmen and workshop gilders, restorers and frame experts. But this is what I realized over the last year, when my father was less and less present in the workshop: there are so many things I already knew about frames, about patina and gilded surfaces – but I never knew that I did! Only in the absence of my father was I forced to rely on my own knowledge and instincts.

TFB: What is the history of the business? – who founded it?

RK: It really goes back four generations, to Thomas’s great-grandfather. He and his son started to make a living as gilders, and only had anything to do with historical frames as a sideline. Thomas’s father Werner was a gilder and framemaker, and started collecting antique frames of exemplary quality, and Thomas, who took over the business when he was quite young, continued in this area.

TFB: Can you describe the workshop, and the craftsmen who work there? Are they mainly restoring antique frames?

RK: Our workshop is the central part of Basel, and is the heart and brain of all our work. We also have four different storerooms, and everything is based in the Eramushaus in the historic centre of the city – a stone’s throw away from the Kunstmuseum Basel and facing the former Gallery Beyeler.

TFB: Do you know how Thomas came to move the business more towards collecting and dealing in antique frames, rather than mainly reproducing them?

The late 15^th century walnut frame used to reframe Pier della Francesca’s Nativity for the National Gallery

RK: I saw this happen as I grew up, and it was as bold as it was risky. Think of it – how many hundreds and thousands of frames do you have to invest in, and lay down like fine wine to mature in your storerooms, before you can have a wide enough range to be able to offer a choice for any painting which is brought to you? The massive, very finely carved walnut frame (mentioned below by Peter Schade) which was my father’s last project for the National Gallery, was a fortuitous coincidence of the Gallery’s wish to reframe Piero della Francesca’s Nativity after its restoration, with Thomas’s innate aesthetic sense and the contents of his storeroom.

TFB: Basel is situated between France, Germany and Italy, where three of the great European cultures meet, each of them having reached a peak of technical and aesthetic excellence in framemaking, at different periods and in different styles. Did your father appreciate them all equally? Did he love the airy asymmetry of German Rococo as much as the classicism of the Renaissance? Perhaps he had one frame which was his favourite out of all of them…?

RK: Yes, I wouldn’t say that he was bound to a particular style or period, but first and foremost collected quality. But obviously there is an enormous geographical asymmetry. How many dozen fine Italian frames from the time of Raphael and Botticelli can I find, before stumbling upon a high quality German frame from the same period? We find this same imbalance in architecture, too; I lived in Florence for a year, and the palazzo where I stayed was still in the hands of the family who had owned it for more than 550 years. You simply couldn’t find that kind of untouched historical building in Berlin, Munich or Hamburg, to give a stark example. It is quite similar with frames.

However, there’s another side to it as well; some frames are more historically bound to a particular period than others. Let me explain. An ornate gilded Louis XIV frame with richly carved floral motifs has – historically speaking – become the sign of a bourgeois (originally even monarchical) taste, symbolism, and, you could say, even ideology. This means that a great Louis XIV frame from the 17^th century may not just be ‘wrong’ to use on an earlier Renaissance painting, but also on a 20^th century work of art. In fact, Impressionists like Pissarro were hopelessly trying to escape the literal and metaphorical bourgeois ‘framing’ entailed by a carved giltwood moulding, and for all avant-garde movements the gilded frame must have been the ultimate thing to avoid.

Vlaminck, River scene, 1905, before and after reframing in Baroque Piedmontese frame

That is why (which might really sound counter intuitive) sometimes the older the frame, the more modern its application! I recently framed an important Fauve painting by Vlaminck from 1905, which was then shown in our exhibition during Art Basel. After considering nine different proposals, we ended up putting it into an early 17^th century reverse frame from northern Italy, probably Piedmont, with a carved bay leaf ornament, which had been bought by my father more than a decade ago. The carving of the decoration was so rough and ‘primitive’ that it bears a strange anachronistic affinity with Vlaminck’s brushwork; even building an aesthetic dialogue with his technique. The frame is three hundred years older than the painting, but still it looks as though the Piedmontese carver had thought of Vlaminck’s work; and… the frame fitted it to within two millimeters!

Why do I mention this example of a framing I completed very recently? Well, if I had to name a single craft which Thomas perfected in his lifetime, it would be this – bringing together the frame and painting, sometimes in a very unexpected way (Peter Schade describes this beautifully below). This bringing together is deeply informed by historical framing, but in the end goes beyond it.

TFB: What do you think is most important about Thomas’s legacy?

RK: While tradition and the past are crucially important to me, I am currently trying to work out what the future for the frame and for the whole craft is going to look like, and how we – as a community of frame dealers, curators, conservators and historians – can increase the standing of the frame within the art world. We have to battle with recruiting young apprentices, dealing with the uncertain financing situations in museums, supporting vulnerable family-run businesses, rousing an art market which is neglecting the whole topic, and educating collectors and curators who often still do not realize the possibilities which frames can bring to their collections. It’s a huge task, but, if I can bring about an improvement in any of these areas and unlock some of the hidden potential of our frames, this will be the best way to remember Thomas.

TFB: He must have dealt with many of the great international museums?

RK: Yes, of course – many museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. The National Gallery in London and the enduring relationship with Peter Schade is a special one, because of the unique effort the Gallery is making by framing their masterpieces individually. Large museums tend either to neglect the question of the frame, or try to find general solutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, putting the same frame round hundreds of artworks from different contexts, periods and artistic approaches.

One of my personal goals is to continue my father’s work of proselytizing on the importance of the frame by extending the networks and relationships we already have with museums, and by suggesting that they think of the subject in new ways.

Framing – I am becoming continually more convinced by this since taking over the business – is a deeply curatorial act, rooted in cultural and (art) historical norms which reflect society at large. But since the knowledge, study and categorization of it was never ever concentrated in any one society, foundation or museum institution, it has tended to be easily marginalized. We must change this, because obviously it has enormous potential, for both private and public collections.

Liminality plays a key role in contemporary art and theory: only the frame, this literally liminal or marginalized structure around the artwork, still waits to be brought to our attention. Yet if we approach the work of art from its margins, the border – the frame – will shed new light on the painting and how we perceive it.

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Thomas Knöll remembered by Peter Schade

Head of Framing at the National Gallery, London

The Erasmushaus, Basel

Thomas Knöll took over the family framing business in 1983, aged twenty-four, and quickly discovered what would become a lifelong fascination with antique frames. Under his guidance, the business changed its focus from the making of replica frames to the buying and selling of original pieces. Thomas never bought to sell: he was captivated by the intrinsic quality of the object, and collected frames through a genuine passion, whether they were high-quality 15^th century Florentine patterns or provincial 17^th century Spanish, with little concern for their saleability. It is common for dealers in antiquities to describe their stock-in-trade as a collection, but Thomas Knöll was a passionate collector first and foremost, who would often make a sale simply by infecting others with his enthusiasm. He could make clients see the qualities in the frames which he discovered.

Basel was the perfect location for the rapid acquisition of an unrivalled collection of Italian Renaissance frames, and the move of the business to the Erasmushaus in 2009 was its coming of age. This building became the platform for the involvement of his sons – first Carlo and then Robert – as the magical space of the original 14^th century vaults quickly filled with frames of the highest quality. The occasional use of antique frames to hold 20^th century and contemporary works opened the door for Carlo to branch out into dealing in fine art.

Hendrick Ter Brugghen (1588-1629), Man playing a lute, 1624, o/c, 100.5 x 78.7 cm., in 17^th century parcel-gilt and black Flemish frame with arabesque centre and corner panels, and detail, NG 6347

Thomas Knöll was not always easy stay in touch with; emails and phone calls were often left unanswered, since he needed to be absent and unavailable in order to have his own space. But the experience of visiting him at the Erasmushaus was the complete opposite: Thomas would share a whole day of intense conversations and looking at frames from morning to late in the evening – all aspects of frames: their inherent qualities; their interplay with works of art, which was so important; the frustrations of dealing with museums: all with the passionate belief that through discussion and openness a deeper understanding of their meaning was possible. The decisive explanation felt often only just out of reach. As a framer Thomas Knöll was always both philosopher and artist.

Palma Vecchio (c.1480-1528), Portrait of a poet, c.1516, o/c, 83.8 x 63.5 cm., in mid-16^th century Sienese cassetta and frieze with a Greek fret inscribed on a punchwork ground, corner rosettes and donor shields, NG 636

Thomas never insisted on having the last word. Sometimes I would choose a frame, and he would be happy with the result; but often he would show me frames which seemed impossible at first sight – then we would look at them again later, and slowly I began to see what he had known immediately. We framed numerous paintings with unexpected and always very authentic results.

Palma Vecchio’s Poet, details of corners

Framing always has a tendency to follow fashion, even the framing of old master paintings. The knowledge of this branch of art is still in its infancy, and museum curators and collectors rarely reflect as to how the whole work of art was originally conceived. Instead, the choice of frame is frequently guided by the way similar paintings have been framed elsewhere. Thomas was not necessarily a great scholar in the investigation of original framings, but he was always guided by existing period objects; and in this way he united frames with paintings in combinations which will stand the test of time, because the choices made owe nothing to the changing whims of custom.

Titian (fl.1506-d.1576), Death of Actaeon, c.1559-75, o/c, 178.8 x 197.8 cm., in 16^th century Venetian architectural panel frame, inner frame with outset corners and scallop shells, polychrome and parcel-gilt, NG 6420

Striking framings of this kind at the National Gallery include Ter Brugghen’s Lute Player NG 6347, Palma Vecchio’s Poet NG 636, Titian’s Death of Actaeon NG 6420 and Piero della Francesca’s Nativity NG 908.

Piero della Francesca (c. 1415/20-92), The Nativity, early 1480s, o/panel, 124.4 x 122.6 cm., in antique Italian Renaissance reverse moulding frame, very finely carved in walnut with leaf-&-dart ogee beneath top edge; frieze with an imbricated scale guilloche; bay leaf astragal at top edge; trefoils holding fanned leaves and buds between palm leaves; stained, polished and parcel-gilt; NG 908

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