Object Notes

Extensive use of tortoise shell decoration on frames, boxes, and cabinets was one result of the world-wide sea trade of Spain and the Spanish Netherlands (Flanders). Frame makers often used colored papers or metallic foil behind the shell or tinted it, as here, to enrich its color.

Extensive use of tortoise shell decoration on frames, boxes, and cabinets was one result of the world-wide sea trade of Spain and the Spanish Netherlands (Flanders). Frame makers often used colored papers or metallic foil behind the shell or tinted it, as here, to enrich its color. 

Extensive use of tortoise shell decoration on frames, boxes, and cabinets was one result of the world-wide sea trade of Spain and the Spanish Netherlands (Flanders). Frame makers often used colored papers or metallic foil behind the shell or tinted it, as here, to enrich its color.

This small oak frame is in a fine state of preservation. Although it maintains the center and corner cartouche common in French frames of the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries, the carving of tendrils and scrolls pulls all elements of the frame together so that it would form a continuous decorated surface around the work of art it contained.