White gold picture frame, water gilded and made to measure

Six-karat white gold leaf is the coolest of the golds I work with: laid over a brown bole and burnished, it reads closer to polished chrome than to yellow gold. This white gold picture frame puts that finish on a narrow moulding, 24 mm across the face and deep enough behind it to take a stretched canvas. It is water gilded and made to measure, one frame at a time, in my workshop in north eastern Poland.

Frame profile

Nearest the artwork the face opens with a long hollow that flattens out as it reaches the work. It rises into an ovolo that crowns the moulding right at the outer edge. The outer wall is undercut in a gentle, flattened curve, so the widest point of the frame sits at the front and the mass tapers back towards the wall. Seen from an angle the frame therefore looks considerably lighter than its 33 mm thickness would suggest.

Specification

• Style: narrow gallery profile, deep behind the face
• Finish: water gilded 6-karat white gold leaf over brown bole, burnished, gilded across the whole visible surface
• Moulding width: 24 mm
• Moulding thickness (face to back): 33 mm
• Rebate: 7 mm wide, 20 mm or 30 mm deep, selected in the order menu
• Material: low-tannin timber of the kind used in museum conservation
• Corner joinery: mitred at 45 degrees and reinforced with wooden splines
• Gilding: real gold leaf laid on water over gesso and bole, then burnished with an agate stone
• Glass, backing and matting: available as add-ons, priced individually
• Mounting and hanging: spring clips fitted as standard, vertical or horizontal
• Suitable for: stretched canvases, oil paintings, photographs, prints and drawings

Ordering: enter the dimensions of the artwork itself. I build in 2 to 3 mm of clearance so the work slides in without forcing, and the moulding overlaps the edge of the artwork by roughly 4 to 5 mm.

Which artworks and interiors it suits

The slim face and deep rebate suit work that is already strong on its own: contemporary oils on canvas, large photographic prints, monochrome and near-monochrome painting. The cool leaf does not push warmth into the picture the way yellow gold does, so blues, greys and cold whites stay where the artist put them, while the rebate swallows the stretcher completely and leaves only the painted surface visible.

In an interior it behaves like a bright metal edge rather than a decorative surround. It sits comfortably in modern rooms with a lot of white wall, and it works alongside chrome, brushed steel and glass without the clash that a warm gilt frame can produce. If you are weighing up warmer options, the rest of my gilded picture frames run from this cool white through moon gold to full 23-karat yellow, and my guide to gold picture frames sets out how each shade behaves against different palettes.

How the frame is made and finished

The moulding is milled to profile, then cut and joined before any finishing begins. The mitres are reinforced with wooden splines, so the corners are closed and structural before the frame ever sees gesso. Several coats of gesso follow, each one worked back, and then the bole: a fine coloured clay ground, brown on this frame, which is what gives burnished gold its depth and its final colour temperature.

The gold is laid by water gilding, the traditional method in which the leaf is floated onto a wetted bole surface and drawn down as the water is drawn in. The leaves arrive roughly 80 by 80 mm square and are cut on the gilder's cushion for a moulding this narrow, then laid one beside the next with an overlap of about a millimetre. Once the gold has set, the surface is burnished with an agate stone until it takes the hard reflective shine that gives this frame its character, and finally sealed.

How it differs from a factory frame

Factory gilding is almost always a metallic foil or a sprayed finish over machine-made length, cut to size and stapled: no gesso underneath, nothing to burnish, and the colour fixed by the coating. Here the ground is built by hand, the bole colour is a decision, the leaf is real gold, and the shine comes from stone against metal rather than from lacquer. It also means a frame damaged in twenty years can be repaired and re-gilded rather than replaced.

Functionality

The frame is supplied without glazing as standard, which is how most stretched canvases and oils are framed. The rebate is 20 mm deep in the standard build and 30 mm as a menu option, and deeper rebates can be milled to order. The deeper option counts not for the look but for what it encloses: a 30 mm rebate takes a gallery-depth stretcher and still holds it flush.

The same profile can also be built as a floating frame, with no rebate, so that a canvas sits inside the frame with a visible gap around it rather than under an overlapping edge.

Frequently asked questions

Is 6-karat white gold really gold leaf?

Yes. It is genuine gold leaf, alloyed with silver to bring the karat down and the colour towards white. Lower karat means a cooler, harder, more reflective surface, which is why 6-karat is the whitest of the leaf I use and the closest to chrome.

Will it take a box canvas?

A stretcher up to 20 mm sits in the standard rebate and one up to 30 mm in the deeper option. Anything thicker than that is milled to order, so send me the stretcher measurement with your dimensions.

Can the same moulding be gilded in another shade?

It can. The same profile is gilded to order in 12-karat white gold, 22-karat moon gold, 23-karat yellow gold or palladium, and the bole colour underneath can be changed too, which shifts the final tone of the metal.

Complete framing, additional options

Every frame I make can be completed with a full archival mounting prepared in the workshop: anti-reflective UV-filtering glass, museum-quality matting, spacers and Dibond backing. The four glass classes, the materials and the full museum framing build are set out on my archival and museum framing page.

Mounting and hanging

Spring clips are fitted at the workshop as standard. They rotate aside, so a canvas can be dropped in or swapped later without tools. Brass plates with screws are available on request, supplied loose for you to fit. Choose vertical or horizontal hanging in the order menu; picture wire is fitted as standard and a single D-ring is available on request.

Made to measure

The base price shown is the price per linear metre of moulding. The perimeter of the artwork is not the whole length of moulding a frame needs: mitred corners consume extra length, and the wider the moulding, the more they take. The calculator accounts for the full moulding consumption including corners, along with any options you select.

For this moulding width the calculator handles artworks up to 180 cm around the perimeter; anything larger is made to individual order, so send me the dimensions and I will price it. Production time is 20 to 30 working days.