Henry Heydenryk, Jr.

Henry Heydenryk Jr.
Dutch American framemaker Henry Heydenryk Jr. & Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí collaborate on a project in 1958
Born	1905
Died	June 23, 1994 Mystic, Connecticut
Nationality	Dutch
Known for	Frame maker, historian, author and designer
Scientific career
Fields	Picture framing
Institutions	The House of Heydenryk (Heijdenrijk)

Henry Heydenryk Jr. (1905-1994) was a Dutch American frame maker, historian, author and designer. He was the fourth generation descendant of a family-run business, The House of Heydenryk (Heijdenrijk). Founded in Amsterdam in 1845, the company is one of the world’s oldest framing companies. The firm made and supplied reproductions and antiques to the Tate and National Gallery museums in England, the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands and for many other important museums and private collectors including Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza and members of the Rothschild family.

In 1936, Henry Heydenryk Jr. brought the firm to New York City in the United States where he would revolutionize the framing industry by creating new designs and finishes. He supplied both hand crafted frames and antiques to major artists, collectors and museums in the US and Europe. He would also author two books on the art and history of picture framing, The Art and History of Frames: An Inquiry into the Enhancement of Paintings in 1963 and The Right Frame: A Consideration of the Right and Wrong Methods of Framing Pictures in 1964.

In the beginning, the American House of Heydenryk was a franchise of the Dutch firm, making period reproductions for artists, galleries and museums. Heydenryk Jr. would eventually branch out from traditional frame making and design his own mouldings and finishes for contemporary artists in Manhattan under the name The House of Heydenryk, Jr. Inc.

Henry Heydenryk Jr. is credited with introducing and popularizing the wormy chestnut frame in 1938, using wood from trees destroyed by blight and applying new finishes, painted, scraped and stained, as an alternative to traditional gilt and smooth surfaces. In 1937, Heydenryk befriended the American Modernist painter Marsden Hartley after his dealer Alfred Stieglitz closed his gallery. He designed and loaned frames for Hartley's first exhibition with the Hudson Walker gallery in 1938. The show was an immediate success and Hartley would continue to use Heydenryk’s designs for all of his exhibits until his death in 1943.

In addition to Hartley, The House of Heydenryk, Jr. worked directly with and made frames for other American Modernist artists including Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Max Weber, Charles Sheeler, Jacob Lawrence, Stuart Davis, Romare Bearden, Milton Avery, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Abraham Walkowitz.