Mitered Frames—Special Corners

Below are examples of mitered frame designs featuring decorative corners, emphasizing a key source of the frame’s artistic beauty: the constructive significance of its joints. The infinite range of decorative opportunities the corners of the frame afford is one of the great benefits of closed-corner frames. For good reason, picture frame makers have traditionally found their chief expressive opportunities in embellishing the frame’s corners to emphasize the frame’s protective duty and function, as well as its unifying compositional role—the physical integrity of the frame and the evident care in how it’s put together being key to the elemental artistic concern for unity.

As with frame profiles, the possibilities here are endless. Therefore, what’s offered below is not a finite set of options but examples of what can be done—a sense of the creative possibilities which we invite you to explore with us.

You’ll find examples of Special Corners on Compound Mitered Frames, on this page…

Proud Splines—

Trevor Davis completing a simple mitered frame with proud splines.

Our mitered frames are always joined with splines—triangles of wood inserted in slots cut through the joints. As do the joints of our through mortise-and-tenon frames, the splined corners of our mitered frames offer a simple opportunity to emphasize and enhance the inherent beauty of the frame’s joinery by exposing and giving slight relief to the main joining element—in this case the spline itself. The joint may be further accented with dowels that pin the joint—another constructive element with natural visual interest. This, then, is a good starting point for special decorative treatment of the corners.

 

 

Simple Designs for Mitered Frames with Special Corners—

 

Framed Examples:

Basic Mitered Frames with Special Corners on Matted and Floated Works on Paper—

Mitered Frames with Special Corners on Paintings and Works on Paper Framed Close—

(Framing “close” means without a visible mat.)