How do you take $40,000 worth of gilded picture frames, in sections up to 25 1/2 feet long, from Baltimore to Philadelphia? Very carefully.
And in a school bus.
That's how they went yesterday from the gold leaf studio of R. Wayne Reynolds on Falls Road to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where the frames will be joined with two huge paintings by early American artist Benjamin West.
For many years the paintings -- "Christ Rejected" (1814) and "Death on the Pale Horse" (1817) -- have had only simple black strip frames. But in conjunction with the academy's recent renovation, Mr. Reynolds was commissioned to create gilded frames in a Federal period (1790-1820) style.
Widely known for gold leaf work, Mr. Reynolds and his staff have worked for the National Gallery of Art, the U.S. Capitol in Washington, New York's Metropolitan Museum and recently completed the gilding of the mansard roof atop downtown Baltimore's NationsBank building.
The Philadelphia frames were cast in California in 10-foot sections of polyethylene and shipped to Baltimore. Once here, they were joined to make the eight sections of correct lengths -- 15-by-25 1/2 feet and 17-by-22 feet.
Then they received primer, base coat and gold -- using 3,500 sheets of gold leaf 3 3/8 inches square. Finally, a colored glaze was applied to give a patina suggesting age.
Starting at 7 a.m. yesterday, Mr. Reynolds and his team wrapped the sections, weighing about 900 pounds in all, and lowered them out the second-floor studio's bathroom window onto the roof of a one-story building behind.
Then they lowered them to the ground and into a chartered school bus with a 28-foot-long unobstructed interior.
"I got the idea on a field trip with my son," said Mr. Reynolds. "I kept looking back down the long aisle to see if he was one of the kids making all the noise, and it occurred to me that this would be the way to transport the frames."
Six members of the Reynolds team made the trip to Philadelphia.
The frames won't actually be attached to the paintings -- they'll be attached to the wall around them -- but they'll look as if they are.