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Decorative Arts
FRAMES OF REFERENCE
When the Metropolitan Museum of Art wants a few Tiepolos
framed, or a collector has an oil painting that needs to be cleaned and
restored, they call on the experts at the Lowy company
BY LINDA DANNENBERG |
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An opulent inventory of period and reproduction frames—and the tools to restore or create them—fills the ateliers of the Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring' Company. Clockwise from Irft: Intricately carved antique frames in the first-floor showroom; a custom reproduction frame being coated with u layer of gesso; in the carver's studio, an artisan's array of predawn instruments; a gilder applies a fragile sheet of gold leaf to a frame's border; the gilder's pots and tools; Larry Shar, Lowy's president, and his son, Brad, with a backdrop of antique frames. |
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With a John Singer Sargent stacked in the rcsroration rack, a Jackson Pollock poised on an easel awiiiuny Us owner, and a Renoir trying on five different 18th-century frames through
the magic of computer imagine, the Julius Lnwy Frame & Restoring Company is hardly your liicic frame shop around the corner. Ensconced behind the carved mahogany doors of a six-story town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the Lowy company, established in 1907, offers not only museum- quality framing, but also world-class art conservation and frame restoration. A team of experts—art historians, artists, photographers, as well as woodworkers, carvers, restorers, and gilders—all ply their trades in well-lighted ateliers. Many of the Lowy team, such as Allan Webb, a master carver from the United Kinsdom, and Yi Yi Chang, former sculptor and Lowy's frame restoration specialist from China, |
apprenticed in other countries before coming to New York. Larry Shar, Lowy's president and owner, is carrying ona family tradition that originated with his father, Hillard, who joined the firm in 1938 and eventually took over the compiiny. Son Brad, vice-president and his father's right-hand man, rep-
resents the third generation in the family business. Over the years, the Shars have attracted a stellar clientele that includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art (they reframed three large Tiepolos for the new Sackler Gallery) and the Museum (Modem Art (they reframed Cezanne's The Bathers). Other clients include the National Gallery of Art, Sotheby's, David Rockefeller, and Ralph Lauren.
Lowy is flourishing today not only because the art market is booming, but because, as Larry Shar points out, over the past fifteen years people have grown interested in the art of > |
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Decorative Arts
In the gilding and. finishing department, new frames are coated,
with gesso and clay, then gilded with fragile sheets of 23-karat gold leaf. The gilt on old damaged frames is spruced up
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the picture frame. "Years ago," he says, "people chose frames without particular regard for the period or provenance Today people are taking great care in choosing a frame that fits the period of the art. An antique frame that is proper historically and aesthetically, or an authentic handcrafted reproduction if an original is not available, enhances the art." The heart of the Lowy enterprise is its collection of more than 3,500 rare antique frames the largest in the country ranging in date from the 1500s to the 1950s, in styles from Renaissance to American Classical Revival, and in price from about $5,000 to $250,000. The majority of these frames, many found at auctions here and in Europe, are opulently carved and gilded wood. But there are other styles as well, such as the gilt frames of molded plaster popular in the 19th century, some simple American Arts and Crafts wooden frames, and a few folk art frames from the turn of the century fashioned of peanut shells and tiny pinecones. The collection includes a prized group of early-2Oth-century American frames designed or commissioned by artists, such as those by the American Impressionists Chilcle Hassam, who specified gilt frames with his initials as a recurring motif, and Maurice Prendergast, who had his brother Charles create frames embellished with sgraffito, or scratched decorations. Antique frames such as these are as collectable as other kinds of antiques, and are considered works of art in their own right. In addition to offering rare antique originals, Lowy crafts superb line-for-line and technique-for-technique reproduction frames. They also design modern frames. The woodworkers' and carvers' workshop is located a few blocks away from the headquarters, where they have ample room to work. All other Lowy functions are performed at the town house on East 80th Street. In the painting restoration and conserv.irion department on rhc bright and airy sixth floor, restorers working with delicate solutions, tiny brushes, cotton |
balls, Q-tips and infinite patience, bring cracked, yellowed, torn, or otherwise damaged canvases back to their on, condition. An ominous sky slowly turns blue on a 17rh-century Dutch landscape recently sent in for cleaning; the jewels in the hair of a young woman in an unsigned French Realist portrait sparkle again. One floor down in the gilding and finishing department, new frames are coated with gesso and clay, then gilded with fragile sheets of 23-karat gold leaf, and the gilt on old damaged frames is spruced up. The fitting and matting department, where only archival materials are used, shares the fourth floor with the paper conservation lab, where drawings and water-colors are restored. Passing through here in recent days was a large pale Vargas drawing of a lissome blonde nude, in to have a few wrinkles pressed out. The third floor holds much of Lowy's inventory of antique frames, neatly stacked by period and style. Next door is a high-tech digital scanning studio for documenting art submitted for restoration, conservation, framing, or evaluation. Elsewhere, another lab uses infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray photography to help pinpoint damage, faults, and previous restoration invisible to the naked eye. The fruits of all these labors can be viewed in the company's hushed and softly lighted ground-floor showroom, a small museum ot rare and beautiful antique frames. Treasures abound, such as the imposing 16th-century Bolognese gilded frame with a wide border of floral sgraffito and intricate punch-work around the edges. Here hangs Larry Shar's piece de resistance—a majestic, elaborately carved wall-size French Régence gilt frame from the period between Louis XIV and Louis XV, with an asking price of $250,000. "There are several museums," confides Larry, "looking tor art to fill this frame." •
For more information, call Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring
Company at 212-861-8585. |
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VIRTUAL FRAMING
The days when a client would hold up frame after frame against a painting to find the perfect match are fast becoming a distant memory at the Julius Lowy Frame & Restoring Company. "Using the latest in computer technology, we bring art into the 21st century," says Larry Shar. "We have our entire inventory on computer. Say a client is look-
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ing tor a 17th-century Spanish frame for a large 17th-century portrait. We can search our inventory on the computer and print out photographs of all our frames of that period. If we have a photograph of the art, another program on the computer can actually size and "frame" the painting with a selection of the frames. We have done Picassos,
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Van Goghs, anJ Seurats this way. There are still clients, of course, who like to come in and see the frames in person, but there are many others who buy the frame simply from seeing the computer-generated photos of their art in a suggested frame. Working this way saves wear and tear on the art, and on the frame." |
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