I made a large print of last month's iconic Laundry Photo and trimmed it to fit inside the ornate enameled frame received as a gift this Christmas by Mabel Watson Payne's California grandmother. Swarovski crystals punctuate the center of each pastel blossom. As soon as I saw this object it reminded me of some other object seen in the fairly recent past But it took several days before my brain finally laid its proverbial hands on the image of the carved and painted wooden frame of a French settee at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (below). I had taken several pictures of it in September. And this piece of museum furniture showed me that the brand-new sparkly picture frame, mass-produced in China, probably did nevertheless deserve to be seen as a careful expression of an authentic 18th century motif.
