102 Professional Notes

nylon surface without marking it). There are headings, captions and text labels, but no battery labelling (the method of labelling by which individual items are given a number or letter which corre- sponds to part of a vast list, generally at the bottom or side of a display case, and one abhorred by the present author) as exemplified by the Byzantine exhibition in the British Museum (I995), though a technique generally popular with United Kingdom national museums. The Wis- bech lettering is computer generated and printed either directly onto the coloured paper or onto white paper and then photocopied. The captions and text are Wordstar or New-Word @ 10 to 12 point-a much smaller size than one would use for almost any other kind of

Electronic Imaging: EVA ‘94

Organised as before by VASARI Enter- prises, with their accustomed precision, EVA ‘94-the 5th annual conference, exhibition and tutorial sessions devoted to ‘Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts’-took place at the National Gal- lery, London, 25-29 July 1994, and it is now firmly established as the leading European forum in this field. Museum applications themselves are a relatively limited sector, but both the range of the contributions made by museum spccial- ists, and the wide variety of develop- ments which may soon have applications within museums, mean that the papers presented during the three days of the conference deserve the closest attention. The organisers, led by Dr. James Hems- ley, succeeded in making the volumes of the Conference Proceedings (3 vols., ISBN O-9519980-6-4), with very few blank pages, available on a day by day basis, which is no mean achievement, and these provide an invaluable series of progress reports describing projects being undertaken worldwide.

display. The headings are VPG of differ- ent, much larger, point sizes.

It cannot be claimed that this display entirely solves all the problems posed by the small size of the exhibits, and it was not practical to use slave magnifiers. It would, however, have been possible to provide drawings, photographs, models or enlarged casts, but only at the cost of reducing the number of actual specimens on display, and in the event supplemen- tary drawings have only been provided for the 17th century tokens.

Photo Credits: Wisbech & Fenland Museum, Cambridgeshire

DAVID C. DEVENISH

This may include experience gained at some cost in the not so distant past, such as Andrea T. Notman’s ‘Project Update: DCI, the Harvard University Art Museums and EmbARK!T” Many of the other ‘Case Studies’ (27 July) provided useful insights with potential applica- tions elsewhere and the multiplicity of approaches currently being developed is a strength in itself. ‘Image and Multi- media Telecomms’ (28 July) included several components of the RAMA proj- cct-the major European initiative in multimedia telecomms for museums- while Dr. R.M. Spearman of the National Museums of Scotland described the progress being made with its CLAN project. However, it remains to be seen, as in so manv multimedia presentations, whether the intellectual content of these resources being developed for the gen- eral public will match the sophistication of the technology now being made avail- able, though this dichotomy between process and product is not directly a concern of EVA. On the other hand, Projects such as ELISE, which is being funded by the Commission of the Euro- pean Communities under the Libraries Programme, have great potential, with

Professional Notes 103

the VAN EYCK project-using Morelli devised by Will Vaughan-the most promising.

‘Bridging the Electronic Arts and Electronic Imagery’ (29 July) introduced a new topic to EVA, with two papers, but most of the final sessions were devoted to ‘Imaging Futures: Issues of Form & Content’. Of particular interest in this context were the papers on the MUSA project which has been devel- oped from the original VASARI project (Brunelli + De Michelis, and Geschke + Fischer) and Harold Kraemer’s analysis of ‘The Problems of Registration and Terminology of Contemporary Art’, while Anthony Hamber, now Group

Imaging Systems Manager of Christies International, in ‘The Challenge of Digi- tal Imaging Technologies: A Practical View Of The Future’, concluded with the observation: ‘A salutory note to finish on is the fact that in one highly profitable area of electronic imaging, that is the video games market, nine-year-old children are determining a multi-billion dollar global market. Digital imaging will be much more their future than ours. The challenge to these children’s parents is getting it right now so that in adulthood they can fully benefit from the foundations laid today’.

PFTER CANNON-BKCXIKIS

Picture Framing I: European ‘Cassetta’ Frames from the 15th to the 19th Century

In the study of the history of picture frames a drawing is often more effective in communicating technical information than many hundreds of words, and the evolution of the European ‘cassetta’ frame, from the 15th century to the early 19th century, is perhaps best demon- strated through a series of drawings of typical examples. The basic simplified architectural mouldings which are employed in the cassetta frame derive from the Classical aedicule type of altar- piece which is composed around an entablature supported on pillars. In the Early Renaissance this was often of stone or marble, but as carved and gilded wood gradually replaced stone as the preferred material for monumental altars, and artists worked increasingly for secular patrons and not only for the Church, the framing became less architectural and from this compromise the cassetta frame evolved. Once the differentiation between the ‘pillars’/side pieces and the ‘entablature’/top and ‘cill’/bottom pieces, had been abandoned in favour of

a simplified, undifferentiated set of mouldings carried round the frame, the cassetta had been born. Furthermore, the proportions of the simple cassetta could be easily adjusted to suit the weight of a given interior and its furnishings, together with the requirements imposed by the composition of the painting to be enclosed. As the tastes of patrons changed, so did the proportions, materi- als and finishes exploited.

The basic cassetta frame format is that each side is made up of a broad, flat length of wood onto which are attached two narrower strips of wood, or mould- ings, with distinct and usually different profiles, leaving an open frieze between. The inner, or rebate, provides the sight - edge next to the painting, which determi- ncs how much of it is to be seen, while the back-edge, delineating the outer peri- meter of the structure, separates the frieze from the wall and the rest of the room. Certain important types of moulding could well have been inspired bv the profiles created spontaneously bv this method of construction, while it should be noted that the lap joints normally employed do not have the same design significance as mitre joints. Con sequently, the astragal moulding, for example, which has a convex profile flanked by narrow mouldings, is related