Photographic Archive

The Paul Mitchell Archive of Picture Frames is a unique library of visual material and  information. It includes around fifty thousand photographs of framed paintings and related decorative arts from institutions, houses and churches in 24 countries; more than twenty thousand photographs of empty frames; solanders of large images and a growing collection of digital photos.

The information library comprises a large collection of historic and modern books on frames, original and facsimile workshop catalogues, works on architecture and the decorative arts, and an impressive assembly of articles about frames, framemakers and related subjects.

This is the raw material from which Paul Mitchell Ltd have generated a large number of projects, including two books FRAMEWORKS: Form, Function and Ornament in European Portrait Frames (1996) and A History of European Picture Frames (1996), an exhibition, essays in exhibition catalogues and catalogues raisonnés, magazine articles, studies of the best frames in museums, and the cataloguing of major collections.

Example of Archive illustrated index