Frames and supports in 15th and 16th-century Southern Netherlandish painting

CHAPTER I 36 118. Marijnissen 1967, I: 188 and II: 134-135. With pencils not available until the 17th century, marking was done with a sharp point. While most marking lines have disappeared in the making of the joint or under the paint of the frame, we still find some on the backs of some frames (fig. 10). 4. Tools for producing joints, grooves and mouldings The joints were produced using handsaws and chisels (fig. 6: 28-30), the latter generally hit with a mallet. The mallet is a wooden-headed hammer, in most cases cylindrical, into which a wooden handle is inserted either in the direction of the grain of the wood (fig. 6: 62) or perpendicular to it (fig. 6: 63). In the first case the joiner struck in the axis of the chisel for better control of the blow. A mallet was used to hit other pieces of wood (placing handles on tools, inserting pegs or wedges) (fig. 6: 64). A joiner would not strike on wood with an iron hammer, for fear of splitting it. The rounded forms of the mallet were intended so as not to mark the wood when striking it. The chisel is a tool with its body having a (flat) bevelled cutting edge. One end, known as the tang (fig. 6: 29) is inserted into the wooden handle as far as the enlarged shoulder of the tang which served to spread the shock across the wood of the handle and prevent it from breaking. In old pictures, a wide range of chisels and gouges are depicted, but it is frequently difficult to distinguish the characteristics of the cutting edge. These chisels included the mortise chisel, relatively narrow but thicker than other chisels, used for cutting mortises (fig. 6: 30), while the tenons would have been finished with flat chisels. The notching chisel (fig. 6: 28) which is often depicted in paintings, served to produce wide notches. Its rounded corners served to avoid splinters and digging too deep. A similar rounding of plane blades served to avoid shavings being blocked in the plane. A gouge is frequently depicted (fig. 6: 31). This is a chisel with a curved cutting edge, of different widths and depths of curve, used mostly for cutting mouldings. The fine notches (called “gouge marks”), 118 which are seen on the back of certain panels were produced with burins (fig. 6: 32). There must also have been square-ended chisels for producing fillet mouldings. Fig. 10. Marking lines in the stile. Detail of Anonymous, Triptych of the Crucifixion , mid-16th century (Bruges, OLPM , no. 6 ).