FRAHN, CHRISTIAN MARTIN (1782-1851), German numismatist and historian, was born at Rostock. He began his Oriental studies under Tychsen at the university of Rostock, and afterwards prosecuted them at Göttingen and Tübingen. He became a Latin master in Pestalozzi’s famous institute in 1804, returned home in 1806, and in the following year was chosen to fill the chair of Oriental languages in the Russian university of Kazan. Though in 1815 he was invited to succeed Tychsen at Rostock, he preferred to go to St Petersburg, where he became director of the Asiatic museum and councillor of state. He died at St Petersburg.
Frahn wrote over 150 works. Among the more important are: Numophylacium orientale Pototianum (1813); De numorum Bulgharicorum fonte antiquissimo (1816); Das muhammedanische Münzkabinet des asiatischen Museum der kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St Petersburg (1821); Numi cufici ex variis museis selecti (1823); Notice d’une centaine d’ouvrages arabes, &c., qui manquent en grande partie aux bibliothèques de l’Europe (1834); and Nova supplementa ad recensionem Num. Muham. Acad. Imp. Sci. Petropolitanae (1855). His description of some medals struck by the Samanid and Bouid princes (1804) was composed in Arabic because he had no Latin types.
FRAME, a word employed in many different senses, signifying something joined together or shaped. It is derived ultimately from O.E. fram, from, in its primary meaning “forward.” In constructional work it connotes the union of pieces of wood, metal or other material for purposes of enclosure as in the case of a picture or mirror frame. Frames intended for these uses are of great artistic interest but comparatively modern origin. There is no record of their existence earlier than the 16th century, but the decorative opportunities which they afforded caused speedy popularity in an artistic age, and the Renaissance found in the picture frame a rich and attractive means of expression. The impulses which made frames beautiful have long been extinct or dormant, but fine work was produced in such profusion that great numbers of examples are still extant. Frames for pictures or mirrors are usually square, oblong, round or oval, and, although they have usually been made of wood or composition overlaid upon wood, the richest and most costly materials have often been used. Ebony, ivory and tortoiseshell; crystal, amber and mother-of-pearl; lacquer, gold and silver, and almost every other metal have been employed for this purpose. The domestic frame has in fact varied from the simplest and cheapest form of a plain wooden moulding to the most richly carved examples. The introduction in the 17th century of larger sheets of glass gave the art of frame-making a great essor, and in the 18th century the increased demand for frames, caused chiefly by the introduction of cheaper forms of mirrors, led to the invention of a composition which could be readily moulded into stereotyped patterns and gilded. This was eventually the deathblow of the artistic frame, and since the use of composition moulding became normal, no important school of wood-carving has turned its attention to frames. The carvers of the Renaissance, and down to the middle of the 18th century, produced work which was often of the greatest beauty and elegance. In England nothing comparable to that of Grinling Gibbons and his school has since been produced. Chippendale was a great frame maker, but he not only had recourse to composition, but his designs were often extravagantly rococo. Even in France there has been no return of the great days when Oeben enclosed the looking-glasses which mirrored the Pompadour in frames that were among the choicest work of a gorgeous and artificial age. In the decoration of frames as in so many other respects France largely followed the fashions of Italy, which throughout the 16th and 17th centuries produced the most elaborate and grandiose, the richest and most palatial, of the mirror frames that have come down to us. English art in this respect was less exotic and more restrained, and many of the mirrors of the 18th century received frames the grace and simplicity of which have ensured their constant reproduction even to our own day.
FRAMINGHAM, a township of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., having an area of 27 sq. m. of hilly surface, dotted with lakes and ponds. Pop. (1890) 9239; (1900) 11,302, of whom 2391 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 12,948. It is served by the Boston & Albany, and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways. Included within the township are three villages, Framingham Center, Saxonville and South Framingham, the last being much the most important. Framingham Academy was established in 1792, and in 1851 became a part of the public school system. A state normal school (the first normal school in the United States, established at Lexington in 1839, removed to Newton in 1844 and to Framingham in 1853) is situated here; and near South Framingham, in the township of Sherborn, is the state reformatory prison for women. South Framingham has large manufactories of paper tags, shoes, boilers, carriage wheels and leather board; formerly straw braid and bonnets were the principal manufactures. Saxonville manufactures worsted cloth. The value of the township’s factory products increased from $3,007,301 in 1900 to $4,173,579 in 1905, or 38.8%. Framingham was first settled about 1640, and was named in honour of the English home (Framlingham) of Governor Thomas Danforth (1622-1699), to whom the land once belonged. In 1700 it was incorporated as a township. The “old Connecticut path,” the Boston-to-Worcester turnpike, was important to the early fortunes of Framingham Center, while the Boston & Worcester railway (1834) made the greater fortune of South Framingham.
See J.H. Temple, History of Framingham ... 1640-1880 (Framingham, 1887).
FRAMLINGHAM, a market town in the Eye parliamentary division of Suffolk, 91 m. N.E. from London by a branch of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 2526. The church of St Michael is a fine Perpendicular and Decorated building of black flint, surmounted by a tower 96 ft. high. In the interior there are a number of interesting monuments, among which the most noticeable are those of Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and of Henry Howard, the famous earl of Surrey, who was beheaded by Henry VIII. The castle forms a picturesque ruin, consisting of the outer walls 44 ft. high and 8 ft. thick, 13 towers about 58 ft. high, a gateway and some outworks. About half a mile from the town is the Albert Memorial Middle Class College, opened in 1865, and capable of accommodating 300 boys. A bronze statue of the Prince Consort by Joseph Durham adorns the front terrace.