The National Gallery, renowned globally for its painting collection, is also a repository of untold histories preserved within the frames themselves, stories often connected to women who worked outside the institution's official hierarchy. While frames are functionally present to "hold the paintings," they also "hold stories" about the people who made them and "social histories far beyond the walls of the Gallery". Looking at frames opens the opportunity "to discover other works of art" and "reveal fascinating stories" about the frames, how they were made, and the individuals behind them.
Historically, the framing trade was heavily male dominated, with women excluded from the professional guilds that controlled the trade, confining their roles, leaving their work unprotected, and their interests unpromoted. Within workshops, a division of labor persisted: carpentry and design were seen as "men's work," while gilding—the application of gold leaf—was considered a delicate task "suitable for women's hands". Most women entered the framing business through "family connections," such as a husband’s workshop or a father’s trade, operating within a male-controlled system that enforced "lower pay and limited recognition".
This exclusion was mirrored inside The National Gallery in the 19th and early 20th centuries, where the only women officially employed were housemaids. Cultural expectations, enforced by policies like "The Marriage Bar" (abolished in 1946), meant marriage often marked "the end of a woman's employment". Before the policy's abolition, The National Gallery secured framing work solely through contracts with "outside firms," meaning women could only contribute indirectly, typically through specialized roles like gilding in external workshops.
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Who were the first women to conserve frames at the National Gallery?
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Archival records at The National Gallery offer "glimpses of this involvement". One example is Elizabeth Mary Foord, who inherited her husband George’s framing business in Soho in 1842. Unusually, when she died in 1856, she left the business to her eldest and youngest daughters, Eliza Mary and Catherine, who traded as Eliza and C Foord. The company supplied frames to The National Gallery for several years, including a payment recorded on July 1, 1857, for "100 polished Holly frames for the Turner Sketches".
Another critical figure was Mary Batten, a skilled gilder and painter who worked for The National Gallery and the Arts and Crafts Guild. In 1908, she was paid £47, seven shillings, and eight pence for a carved frame she made for the painting The Abduction of Helen by Benozzo Gozzoli. Decades later, Frau Anny Pollak, a framer from Germany, and her husband Fritz tried to set up a business in England. In a letter dated November 29, 1935, the Director of The National Gallery praised her "reproductions of antique frames" as "as good as any I have seen, and certainly better than any being made in England at the present time". The Director was so impressed that he wrote to the Home Secretary to advocate for the Pollaks to remain and work in London, noting their specialization in antique frames was a "great advantage not only to this gallery" but also to collectors and the art trade. Although Anny Pollak sadly died the following year, her ambition allowed her husband, Fritz, to maintain a working relationship with The National Gallery for "well over a quarter of a century," working on frames for pieces like the Giovanni di Paolos and a Cranach.
The situation shifted dramatically by the late 20th century, when more women formally joined The National Gallery staff in departments where they had "never been seen before". This included the Photographic Department, headed by Bunny Wilson, Lucy Close, and Betty Churchyard, and the Curatorial Department, with Dillian Gordon and Susan Foister. It was in this era that the "first women were formally employed in the Gallery's frame conservation roles".
Isabella Kocum, the fifth woman employed as a frame conservator at The National Gallery, explained that the former Head of the Framing Department, John England, sought conservators who could "document everything" and look at the history of frames from "all angles, front, back, sides," not just framers. One of Kocum’s predecessors, Beth Hatt, exemplified this new approach, studying gilding and carving at the City and Guilds School of Art after training under a gilder and carver with "fifty years’ experience". Hatt’s deep knowledge was preserved in an unpublished manuscript dedicated to those who aspire to make beautiful works of art using the "spiritual values of the medieval artist craftsmen".
Today, the work of conservators at The National Gallery often goes unseen—the "main point is that you don't see what we've done," which means the job was done "really well". However, this new generation of conservators focuses heavily on documentation and research, creating dossiers for the next generation. Kocum embraces the role of a "detective" in this work, sometimes discovering that a frame previously deemed a "reproduction" is, in fact, an original. This dedication ensures that the frames, which were once an overlooked repository of history, remain alive.
