The Frame Blog

An auction,  ‘Cadres et bois dorés…‘, will be held by Euvrard & Fabre at the Hôtel Drouot, Paris, on Thursday 20^th November 2025. It comprises 161+ lots of pictures frames, many fairly modest in estimate, and more than 100 lots of looking-glasses.

The e-catalogue is available here, but has far fewer illustrations than the online grid of lots.

Lot 47: a Venetian Mannerist carved giltwood Sansovino frame; late 16^th-early 17^th century; framing a reverse glass Stabat Mater painting of the Virgin and ?St John or  ?Mary Magdalene with the crucified Christ, same period; 21 x 17 cm. including frame; estimate: €1,500-1,800

This gets the prize for sloppy presentation of an item, in a field where the frames to be sold are habitually photographed at oblique angles, against busy backgrounds, and generally with far less care than the worst paintings seem to merit.  Why crop the image so closely that some of the frame itself is excised? – it is counter-productive and looks ugly. Anyway, the frame – although its scrolling  clasps are vastly out of scale with the painting – actually suits the latter quite well, giving the impression of an illuminated parchment unrolling to reveal a precious image.

Lot 56: a  French NeoClassical baguette or architrave frame in gilded oak; 1760s-early 1780s; stamped C [laude]. Pepin (created maître-menuisier 1775; d.1782), together with the mark of the Jurande des Menuisiers-Ebénistes, ‘JME’;  described as 33 x 33.9 cm.(?); estimate: €800-1,000

Lot 67: a pair of stepped Art Deco-style walnut frames; 1920s-30s; 62 x 49.5 cm.; stained and polished; estimate: €400-600

Lot 102: a French artist’s frame in the style of the reeded convex pattern used by Degas; see Peter Mallo, ‘Artists’ frames in pâte coulante‘; late 19^th or early 20^th century; ‘combed’ and polished cream-coloured plaster with gilded back and sight edges; 26 x 20.5 cm.; estimate: €200-250.  See also lots 103-107

Lot 139: described as an 18^th Italian frame, this is a minimally reversed cassetta with slightly dropped back and sight edges and raised, flat, butt-jointed frieze; with slight ogee sight finished in cream, the rest painted in polychrome faux marbre; 79 x 63 cm.; estimate: €400-600

Lot 140: an early 18^th century French flat and butt-jointed carved giltwood frame, provincial in style, with small canted back edge and concave sight edge; the frieze decorated with a chain of daisies and sunflowers alternating with fleur-de-lys on a hatched ground recut in the gesso, the fleur-de-lys perpendicular to the base on all four rails; 64 x 54 cm.; estimate: €500-700

Lot 142: a carved giltwood frame in revival Baroque style, described as North Italian, third quarter 19th century; with flowered back edge, gadrooned convex top edge; scotia; the projecting corners with sculptural C-scroll clasps, shells and strapwork scrolls in the hollow, together with reversed shell centres, the ground of the scotia recut in a trellised patterns; the sight edge with acanthus leaf tips and leaf buds; 64 x 50 cm.; estimate: €250-350

Lot 144: an early 19^th century French 1^st Empire/Restauration giltwood and plaster frame with double scotia profile; the top edge with a flower-enriched piastre moulding; cross-cut acanthus decoration applied in the upper hollow; pearls and a rais-de-coeur sight edge bordering the inner flat frieze;  39 x 31.5 cm.; estimate: €600-800

Lot 150: a pair of 17^th-18^th century Italian limewood cassette; the top and sight edge mouldings ebonized; the friezes painted in a wood grain effect; 125.5 x 92 cm.; estimate: €2,800-3,000

Lot 151: a Louis XIII carved giltwood bunched leaf garland frame; limewood; the torus at the top edge carved into two festoons of bunched bay leaves and berries, oak leaves and acorns, rose leaves and flowers, springing from a sunflower at the top centre and meeting in a large rose at the bottom centre, all on a hazzled ground; acanthus corners; ribbon-&-stave at the sight edge on a hazzled ground; 74  x 104.5 cm.; estimate: €3,500-4,500

Lot 152: an early 17^th century Baroque Bolognese carved giltwood bolection frame; with leaf-tip back edge below a spiral ribbon moulding; concave half-flowered moulding; the torus at the top edge carved with fruit and foliage springing from voluted centre clasps, with vine leaves at the corners; egg-&-dart at the sight edge; 67 x 59 cm.; estimate: €4,000-5,000

Lot 159: a 16^th-17^th century Italian carved giltwood and polychrome cassetta;  with very simple mouldings to offset the decoration, a high top edge and ogee sight; the frieze painted ?white (now silvery grey) with shaped panels (delimited by punchwork) in black or dark blue at the centres, gilded roundels (also delimited by punchwork) holding ?carnations in the corners; the remaining frieze and the panels decorated in sgraffito with arabesques, centred in the panels with cruciform florets; the carnations/pinks and the cruciform motifs suggest that the original painting was an image of Christ, or of the Madonna and Child; 66 x 49 cm.: estimate: €4,000-6,000

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The last lot in this group of picture frames is 161, although the odd frame or so pops up later. The following section contains some miniature frames, but is otherwise comprised of a group of framed looking-glasses of various sizes and periods, many of them fairly small. Some are quite charming, and many of the estimate are very reasonable.

Lot 195: an 18^th Louis XIV carved giltwood frame, possibly Provençale, with convex top edge ornamented with opposing C-scrolls and leaf buds on a cross-hatched ground; with projecting foliate corners; the frieze inlaid with mirrored glass panels; described as originally silvered and lacquered (whether this frame is empty or has been provided with a modern mirrored plate is not revealed in the catalogue entry); 48 x 42.5 cm.; estimate: €250-350

Lot 199: an 18^th Louis XIV carved giltwood frame, bordered by two large astragals at the top and sight edges decorated with miniature strapwork and leaf buds; the central frieze inlaid with mirrored glass panels, overlaid with applied carved and pierced giltwood foliate and floretted appliqués in the corners; (as with the previous lot, whether this frame is empty or has been provided with a modern mirrored plate is not revealed in the catalogue entry);  88 x 73 cm.; estimate: €450-650

Lot 204: an 18^th century French Louis XVI NeoClassical carved giltwood architrave looking-glass frame, with shaped painted pale grey backboard; the fronton comprising a framed oval engraving of a laitière in a landscape, depending from a trompe l’oeil ribbon hanger, which trails flowered rinceaux; further miniature sunflowers and leaves spring above the striated cassettes supported by the side rails, from which ropes of pearls depend; bay leaves spring from the bottom corner cassettes, from which pinecones depend; a spray of miniature sunflowers ornaments the centre of the bottom rail;  107 x 63 cm.; estimate: €350-550

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For information on this sale, contact contact@euvrard-fabre.com

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