In May of 1865, after Abraham Lincoln was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, a table aboard his funeral train was cut into pieces.

The table supported the President's coffin through the slow journey home. The funeral train had left Washington, D.C. on April 21 and traveled 1,654 miles over thirteen days, stopping in Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, and other cities along the route. At each stop the casket was removed for public viewing. An estimated seven million Americans stood trackside as the train passed. When the journey ended in Springfield, the table that had carried Lincoln east and west across the country was broken up and the fragments distributed as keepsakes among the railroad men who had moved him.

A century and a half later, one of those fragments arrived at our frame shop.

The piece is small. Five inches square, roughly an inch thick. Pink marble, smooth on its face, cut on its edges. Smaller than a paperback. Heavier than it looks. On the reverse, a typewritten note attributes the fragment to N.P. Brook, then General Manager of the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the lines that carried Lincoln's funeral train through the eastern leg of its route, and Brook would have had operational responsibility for the equipment moving through his territory. After the burial in Springfield, when the table was cut, the chain of relics traveled back along the same rails that had carried the President.

The fragment came to us from a longstanding collector and friend of the gallery who has trusted us with a wide range of historically significant pieces. He wanted it framed to museum standards.

The BrIEf

One specific design problem stopped us at the bench. The typewritten note carrying the provenance was on the back of the marble. The artifact had to be encapsulated and protected, which meant the back would be permanently sealed away from view. But the inscription was the artifact's voice. To frame it inaccessible felt wrong.
Our solution was to scan the inscription at full size, print the reproduction on archival watercolor paper, and frame it as a second window directly beneath the marble itself. The viewer receives both at a glance: the object on top, its history below. The original stays protected. The reading travels with the piece.

The Design

Michelle Cassens led the design before the artifact arrived, working from photographs and measurements while the marble was still in the client's hands. The artifact arrived by mail and the client will collect the finished frame in person. Working remotely on an object of this weight is its own battle. Every measurement has to land on paper before any decision touches the bench.

We landed on the Whistler, a 1" American closed-corner gold leaf molding with hand-carved corner ornament, built to a bespoke 2" depth. The Whistler profile reads as columns, the architectural vocabulary of American memorial. The Lincoln Memorial. The Capitol. A frame that echoes that language places the artifact in the visual tradition of how this country has remembered Lincoln for generations.

Gold leaf was the right register for the era and for the rest of the client's collection. The closed-corner construction, where the moulding is mitered and worked across the join rather than fitted from cut sticks, matched the level of craft the artifact carries on its own. 

For matting, an off-white acid-free linen, warm and unobtrusive, with a hand gold-leafed Hudson fillet at the marble's window opening to elevate the artifact without overwhelming it. The reproduction sits in its own window beneath, with a matching gold fillet. A 5" hand gold-leafed nameplate anchors the bottom of the layout and gives the viewer the historical context in a single read.

The Build

Dane led the build.

The first plan was a Mylar float-mount, with archival straps holding the marble in suspension above a sunken backer. It would have looked beautiful for a year. Then the straps would have stretched, the marble would have shifted, and the whole thing would have come apart. We are not framing an artifact of this significance for a year. We are framing for the next century.

We pivoted. Dane carved a precision sink in the backing mat sized exactly to the fragment. A Mylar barrier protects the inscribed reverse of the marble from the buffered backing material beneath it. The marble seats into the sink. Tru Vue Optium Museum Acrylic, with its UV protection and permanent anti-static surface, sits over the marble face. The mat assembly and the gold-leafed linen interior walls hold the geometry. No adhesives anywhere on the artifact. Nothing bonded. Every layer is separable in sequence by any qualified framer or conservator who ever needs to open the package.

A note for framers reading this. Direct contact between glazing and a stone artifact is a deliberate trade-off, not a default. The client wanted the marble's full edge profile visible inside the box, which ruled out a perimeter spacer ring. Optium's anti-static surface, paired with our dry Montana interior climate, makes the trade acceptable for this object. For a polished surface in a more humid environment, or a stone with any surface fragility, we would step the sink to maintain an air gap with the same edge view.

The hardest part of the build was not any single component. It was math. Engineering the depth so every layer would sit flush, the dust cover would seat without gapping, the marble would have safe clearance, the mat would lift correctly, the nameplate would land in proportion. The frame was bespoke for a reason. A stock depth would not have answered the geometry.
The finished package weighs roughly 10 pounds. It hangs on D-rings set with square-head screws at the proper depth. It will live correctly on a wall for a very long time.

On Stewardship

Working on a piece of history like this is an honor.

We take our role in preservation seriously. The trust a client places in us when they hand over an artifact is the force behind every decision we make at the bench, and that responsibility shapes the materials we reach for, the depth we engineer, and the documentation we leave behind. A fragment cut from a mourning table a century and a half ago can sit in the wrong frame and degrade quietly for decades, or it can sit in the right one and be received by the next generation in better shape than we found it. The difference is not luck. It is our method.
Framing is the most practical and lifelong investment you can make to protect work you love. Done well, it preserves the object, allows it to be displayed properly, and carries the history forward. Use a framer you trust and a designer who knows the questions to ask.

If you are holding a piece that deserves this kind of care, bring it to us.