Rangefinder Magazine

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Turn of the Century (the last one) Frames:
Still Popular a Century Later by PJ Heller

At the start of the new century in 2000, Ray Brisebois was finding success in the photographic community offering picture frames that were popular 100 years earlier.

Cathedral style

And demand for his convex glass frames—a style popular at the turn of the last century—is booming even as the calendar now shows the year 2001.

“I think we’re selling more of them now than we ever did,” agreed photographer Ted Sirlin of Sirlin Photographers in Sacramento, California. “They’re very easy to sell.”

Brisebois said the popularity of the frames may coincide with the fact that the “baby boomers” are hitting their 50s and are looking to instill a sense of family in their children and grandchildren.

“They’re looking for a sense of family,” said Brisebois, himself a baby boomer. “You want your children and grandchildren to know where they came from.”

With the frames that were offered from his Victorian Frame Company in Santa Rosa, California, they could do just that, he insisted. Those frames are now offered by InLine Ovals of Canada.

	Deep Dome Convex

Unlike pulling out the family photo album only once or twice a year to show the family history, a 14x20 oval sepia print in a convex glass frame mounted on the wall is there for daily viewing pleasure, he said.

“How often do you look at that photograph in an album?” he asked. “For a fleeting moment you get to look in the eyes of your mother or grandmother.

“Enlarge that image, mount it in a convex glass frame and hang it on the wall and everything changes,” he said
“You get to walk by casually, constantly, and look at it, study it to see the facial features, eyes, clothes, the background—all the things that are of your history, your heredity,” Brisebois said. “If the picture is in the album, you don’t have a sense of oneness. It’s not a part of you on an everyday basis.”

Brisebois turned out the wood-grained reproduction frames and convex glass for nearly 30 years, until recently under the company name of Sunlight Frames. He sold them with his own photography as well as with historical photos.

They were sold in furniture stores and showcased in restaurants, hotels and other businesses. At one point, he offered copy restoration work through upscale department stores.

Standard Convex

Brisebois concentrated on selling his frames and convex glass to photography studios and picture framers throughout the United States and Canada. He also offered custom glass bending, providing custom sizes of convex glass. Sales of the frames and convex glass have doubled in the last two years he owned the business, he reported.

In July 2000, Brisebois sold Victorian Frame to InLine Ovals of Mcgrath, Alberta, Canada. InLine, founded in 1986, is a family owned and operated company that specializes in the manufacture and distribution of oval, round and unusually shaped picture frames along with related products and services.

InLine Ovals is also one of the largest suppliers of convex glass. The company can bend glass into any size or shape required by a customer. It will also custom-make frames to any size or shape required.

InLine has more than 10,000 variations and sizes of oval, round and unusually shaped frames in a variety of finishes. It also offers standard oval sizes from 31ž2x5 inches up to 30x40-inches and circles from 4 inches up to 35 inches.

	Circular style

Brisebois said he handed down to InLine’s employees his wood-graining finishing technique so they could continue to manufacture and market his Victorian frames. InLine, which employs about 30 people, has incorporated Brisebois’ frames—and enhanced them—into its Vintage line.

Brisebois acknowledged that he has become somewhat of an authority of the history of convex glass frames.
“Since about the 1880s, many photographs were mounted in a curved, bowed shape similar to convex glass,” he explained. “This gave the photograph a depth of three-quarters to one inch in the center. The curved photograph was then combined, typically, with an oval or octagonal hand-painted wood-grained frame and convex glass for the classic look that occupies its own niche in the history of photography and framing.”

Brisebois said that bending or bowing of photos today was too complicated and costly a process to make it practical. His frames, he said, offer the next best alternative.

Octagon style

He said that antique convex photographs were usually sepia tone or were printed in tones of gray.

“Both may have had color and accent lines added for better definition and highlights,” he noted. “The photographs were typically studio portraits and some landscapes, and were of the family and where they lived. Often hung in the parlor, they were conversation pieces, establishing a visual sense of family.”

Brisebois said the frames he offered—there were four moldings available: classic, Victorian, traditional and traditional with flowers—helped to recreate that same visual sense of family.

“These frames really don’t go with the costume portraits at the fair because that’s a current portrait and it’s kind of a joke,” he said. “Everybody at the fair is contemporary and you get in your costume and there it is. They’ll put a cheap little frame on it and that’s typically the way it goes.

“But when you’re talking about photographs of your parents and your grandparents, then it warrants spending the kind of money that makes it archival,” he said. “Those people are then being honored. You’re honoring your past and you’re sharing it with your next generation.”

	Circle Series II in rosewood

For Brisebois, producing and selling the frames and convex glass was more than just a job.

“Connecting families, that’s one of the exciting things about it,” he said.

“There’s a great interest in genealogy,” Sirlin added. “People are seeking out their old pictures and having them copied and restored to share with others and having them framed.”

While the old-time frames consisted of two parts—cast plaster over a wood blank for strength—Victorian Frame Company’s offerings were cast resin, which Brisebois said offers greater strength and eliminates cracking and chipping of the originals.

InLine Ovals modified the frames, making them even more durable. InLine manufactures the frames using medium density fiberboard (MDF), the same material it said is used in high-end furniture.

MDF is made from farmed aspen trees and is highly compressed to give it tremendous strength, a company spokesman explained.

Sirlin said his portrait and commercial studio, in business for more than half a century, offers copy and restoration services as one of its offerings. He often sees photos and frames which have been damaged over the years.

“I show them we have the exact frame—it’s a reproduction—of the one they have,” he said. “They’re astounded and are very open to buying them and replacing their old picture in the frame plus putting the new pictures that we make in frames. So we do sell a lot of those frames.”

Oblong style

While some may argue that Brisebois’ one-part polyurethane frames are not true to the original, he said few people complain because the frames are not wood and plaster. He was able to duplicate the colors and techniques of the hand-finish antique frames and has personally hand-finished each of the frames he has sold since 1979.

“In fact, if you put my frame among some antique frames you wouldn’t know which was which,” he said, adding that his customers will bear out that claim.

His line of frames—which ranged in size from 5x7-inches to 16x20-inches and came in oval, rectangular, octagonal and cathedral shapes—changed little since 1976. In 1984, he added a “deep dome” for framing artifacts such as bridal bouquets. The deep dome is a 16x20-inch frame with convex glass that is about 6 inches deep.

“What’s nice about it is it’s the opposite of a shadow box,” he said. “There are no shadows.”

InLine continues that tradition by offering a wide range of acrylic domes as well as glass domes with a base.

To assist photographers in selling the frames and convex glass, InLine provides both a wall display and a briefcase display highlighting its products.

	Series I

Sirlin Photographers’ 9000-square-foot studio includes an area where several lines of old-fashioned frames are displayed. The studio also assists customers by helping them design galleries where they can display their photos.

“A lot of times somebody comes in with 15 or 20 pictures and they’re going to have them copied and restored to give away,” Sirlin said. “Then they don’t know what to do with their set. So we design a gallery for them and actually show them how to hang them on the wall.”

Using actual wall measurements, Sirlin will design a paper template, which is then placed on the floor.

“We’ll move the frames around on it like chess pieces until the design is correct,” he said. “Then we go ahead and provide them all of the services of this gallery.”

Brisebois said that he has found antique frames, convex glass and photographs in antique stores—some of which provided him with a surprise.

“On several occasions, I have purchased a frame, convex glass and photograph from an antique store, only to discover one or two additional images hiding under the one displayed,” he said. “Some photographs must have been produced without their own frame and convex glass, displacing portraits produced previously.

Series II

“This may have been a way of saving money and/or getting rid of a portrait of a relative who had fallen out of favor,” he speculated. “One such discovery was a hand-colored classic of a pixie with butterfly wings, seen in parlors at the turn of the century.

“One never knows what treasure may be hiding behind the photograph found in an antique store, or maybe in your grandmother’s attic or trunk,” he said.

(For those who don’t want to search antique stores, InLine Ovals can be reached toll-free at 800-456-1232 or on the Internet at their web site: www.inlineovals.com.

P.J. Heller operates Dateline:, a free-lance photojournalism service based in Santa Barbara, Calif. He can be reached via e-mail at pjheller@west.net.