Our matching brass picture frames were most likely made in the United States circa 1870-1890, when the minimalist and clean-lined decorative style of the Eastlake Movement was most popular. In 1868, English architect and furniture designer Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906) published his highly influential Hints on Household Taste in Furniture Upholstery, and Other Details, which promoted a more modern and cleaner-lined alternative to the worst excesses of Victorian fussiness. Many of the characteristics of Eastlake’s aesthetic – geometric shapes with squares, rectangles, diamonds, and half circles dominating – and references to Asian and Moorish motifs, can be seen in our picture frames. Like his contemporaries William Morris and other leaders of the Arts and Crafts Movement, of which he was undoubtedly a part, Eastlake was a social philosopher. He advocated for beautiful design at affordable prices, the civilizing effect of craftsmanship in everyday objects, simple and restrained elegance and the healthfulness of shallow surface carvings which didn’t collect dust or germs. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that late 19th-century American architects, already designing homes in the fashionably asymmetrical Queen Anne style, overlaid their surfaces with a dizzying mixture of disparate Eastlake architectural elements and created the elaborate “gingerbread” houses with which his name is now most often associated. Condition: Generally excellent. Some of the pivoting brass cleats to hold he picture glass are missing. Dimensions: Frame 10" x 6.5", aperture 4" x 6".