Object Type
This print is an etching. The etching process involves using acid to bite lines in a metal printing plate. The lines on the plate are filled with ink, which is then printed onto paper. It is also an ornament print, meaning that the designer or printmaker especially intended to appeal to craftsmen and women who might find it a useful source for things they were making. This is clear from the title of the book from which this print comes: Sixty Different Sorts of Ornaments ... Very useful to painters, sculptors, stone carvers, wood carvers, silversmiths etc, which was published in 1736. This is one of six plates of furniture designs in the book.

Subject Depicted
The printmaker responsible for this etching, Henry Fletcher (active 1715-1738), has combined three designs by Gaetano Brunetti (active 1731-1758) on one plate. Only the right half of a picture frame is illustrated (which would simply be copied in mirror image by anyone making a complete frame). Atop the frame is a design for a cartouche. Fletcher has used the remaining blank left half, and the blank centre of the frame, for the design for a high-backed, throne-like chair. Brunetti has used some of the typical elements of Rococo design, such as scrolls, trailing sprays of flowers and scallop shells.

Influence
The set of prints from which this one comes had a major impact on British design. Makers of silver, furniture, ceramics, tomb sculpture and trade cards drew on them for inspiration. At least one architect did too - James Paine (1717-1789), who reproduced the cartouche on the pediment of the Mansion House in Doncaster, West Yorkshire, which he built in 1745-1748.