17th Century Guilloche Frame in Ebonized Finish Wood

Referable to the seventeenth century, the ebonized frame examined has a carving called guilloché, whose band looks like a succession of smooth gorges alternating with bands carved with continuous waves.

This particular ornamental processing refers, specifically, to wooden or metal surfaces, made using specific tools called “guillocher”, which allow you to create a repetitive design of engraved lines, linear or wavy (as in this frame). They are composed of strips, whose profile varies in vertical or horizontal direction with a repetitive pattern of wavy or flame lines and sometimes with a combination of both.

These frames made their appearance in the early Baroque, when the rigorous figures of classicism began to bend to freer forms: the flat sides of the furniture began to become curved, potbelly, arched, the frames to break and to recompose in mixed forms, often wavy or flamed.

The years are those of the first half of the seventeenth century, where these wave strips were widely used in furniture, in cabinets, in coins or as picture frames. Equipped with a wide variety of designs, they were often made of ebony wood or other types of compact wood stained black, sometimes gilded. They could also be found in combination with other valuable materials, such as tortoise, ivory, semi-precious stones and metals.

This type of frame in ebony wood worked with this particular technique, was variously used throughout the seventeenth century, as well as to decorate furniture, also to frame paintings and mirrors.

Often described in the inventories of the first half of the seventeenth century, these frames were usually carved by Nordic artisans (German or Flemish) in the service of the Italian courts. Guilloché frames adorned, for example, the jeweled cabinet of the Tribune of the Uffizi and are still found as an ornament of the kneeler and the cabinet of Augusta of the Silver Museum, executed by the first quarter of the seventeenth century.