Polish Girl came into the lab with a very simple wooden storage frame, which Stephanie (American curator) deemed inappropriate for the painting. There was a search of frames owned by the museum and one that was deemed period appropriate was found. It was originally used to frame a pastel but that was a choice made by the collector rather than by the artist, so there was no significant historical tie between the two. After some discussions between curators, the request to reassign the frame was approved. Since the frame was obviously not custom to the painting, it didn’t quite fit, so I had to design both a liner and a collar.

Once Stephanie saw the new frame with the painting, she realized she found the frame too bright and warm. This frame was oil-gilt with red bole peeking through the gold leaf. After talking with Stephanie and Lauren, we decided I would modify the frame using washes of Golden Acrylic paint and GAC medium. As this frame was not historically or artistically significant, we decided that it was acceptable to modify it without the added need for reversibility. After some testing on a sample frame length, I found I could layer and build up opacity using slightly watered down 1:1 GAC:Paint - paint being a mixture of Raw Umber and Phthalo Green (blue version). The layering and the GAC made the acrylic look slightly less plastic-y. Stephanie wanted the inner and outer edges to be quite dark, there was a band of decoration along. the center of the rails that I was able to darken slightly without building up too much paint. This portion of the frame modification certainly veered off the normal conservation path, but everyone was on board with a more radical transformation to better serve curatorial vison.

The liner was toned to match the color and a layer of Golden Polymer Varnish added to better match the gloss. This was a “trust-the-process” kind of project but the end result is quite pleasing.