British picture framemakers, 1610-1950

A revised and substantially expanded 3rd edition of this online resource has just gone online on the National Portrait Gallery website. This dictionary resource has doubled in size since first launched in 2007. Thirty-five additional makers have now been added and the starting point for coverage taken back to about 1610. Although most entries have been researched and written by Jacob Simon, this new edition also features articles by Lynn Roberts and Edward Town. Further contributions would be welcome.

Highlights in the new edition include:

• identification of the role of Richard Norris, as the first known member of the Norris dynasty, in framing and other work in the cabinet of Prince Charles at St James’s Palace in the early 1620s (see case study below)

• biographies for Herman Scholier and Henry Waller, both active in the early 17th century, researched by Edward Town

• a lengthy entry for Gillow of Lancaster, provided by Lynn Roberts

• biographies for George Coffee and William Saltmarsh, who worked for Sir John Soane

• highly revealing information from the account book of George Jackson, who supplied composition ornament to many leading Regency framemakers (see case study below)

• a new entry on Robert Archer of Oxford and an expanded text for his apprentice, James Wyatt, revealing their importance in working for the Bodleian Library and the University Galleries in Oxford in the 19th century

• expanded entries for Edinburgh makers, thanks to information from Helen Smailes, and new entries for Aberdeen and Glasgow framemakers

• entries for Charles Goodwin of Maidstone, who carved frames for Arthur Hughes and some of the Pre-Raphaelites, and for John Henry Steer, London-based but framemaker to two artists with Cornish associations, Lamorna Birch and Laura Knight.

• information from the National Probate Calendar, providing the value of estates for makers dying in the years, 1858-1966, and information from Board of Trade records relating to the setting up and liquidation of businesses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.