LI WILNER IS TALKING NOT ABOUT A LEVIATHAN OF THE OCEANS, BUT THE ENORMOUS FRAME THAT HE AND HIS COMPANY MADE FOR EMANUEL LEUTZE’S [1816 - 1868] WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE.

He isn’t exaggerating: The frame for the 12-by-21 foot masterpiece took Wilner and his entire staff of 30 two years to complete, along with the input of countless scholars and curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The epic voyage has been long, but unlike Ahab, the New York master framer lived to tell the tale: The painstakingly restored painting and its frame will be on display January 16, opening night of the Met’s refurbished American Wing. “It’s the centerpiece of the American collections,” Carrie Rebora Barratt, now associate director for collections and administraton, told the New York Times. It’s also one of the best-known works in all of American art.

Wilner first started dreaming about the project in 1990, when curators at the Met sought him out to make a survey of art works that need reframing. Leutze’s iconic painting was on the long list—it had been reframed since its initial exhibition in New York in 1851, and its simple, narrow gold frame had nothing to do with the work’s history, subject or size. But no one knew what the original frame had looked like.

“For 20 years this one eluded me,” said Wilner, who has framed over 50 paintings at the Met, including Madame X by John Singer Sargent. “I’d given up!”

Then, in 2006, Kevin J. Avery, a curator at the Met, happened across photos of the 1864 Metropolitan Fair in New York: Washington Crossing the Delaware was prominently displayed. The photos, taken by the famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, were small, but the image of the frame was as grand as the historic scene it encompassed; its crest—bristling spears, rifles with fixed bayonets, canons, flags and a proud spread eagle—towered over the exhibition. The Metropolitan’s curatorial staff dove into research mode and determined that the frame in the picture had been made for the painting’s debut exhibition in 1851.

Eli Wilner & Company set to work. After scanning the historic photos, they painstakingly calculated the exact dimensions of the original frame. Comparing details in the photographs with frames from the period, they discovered the classic cove profile and ornamental elements, such as the leaf-and-berry pattern that runs along the top rail. Master carver Félix Terán, who first learned his craft from his family in a village in Ecuador where everyone carved, created models of the crest and the eagle. Others, consulting a pristine 1850s frame, gilded part of the eagle, matching the color and patina; still others created a sample molding. Museum curators made suggestions, adjustments were made.

Innovations and adjustments were constantly required to recreate the 19th-century frame: Terán used a life-size, computerized blow-up of the Brady photographs to create the crest. In preparation for gilding, specialists covered the carved crest with bole, a special liquid clay, repeatedly refining the color. A carved ribbon ran under the length of the crest, but capturing silky undulations in wood proved extremely difficult. The solution: craftsmen created a model by cutting stiff cloth to the full size of the ribbon, dipping it in plaster, then draping it to imitate the folds visible in the 1864 photographs. Corner shields of the frame helped hide bolts allowing for assembly.

In the midst of all this, the 2008 financial crisis hit and work on the renovation of the American Wing at the Metropolitan slowed. But Wilner didn’t stop: “I couldn’t take the risk—what if my master carver got carpel tunnel or was hurt playing soccer?”

Wilner said that the biggest challenge was, quite simply, the size of the frame and “New York space constrictions.” The frame was built in nine pieces, and eventually it took over much of the company’s workspace: “It was like a swimming pool!” Reassembling it was also a challenge; the frame could never be stood fully upright in the workshop: the ceilings were too low.

Wilner noted the expert woodworkers did manage to cut the weight down from an anticipated 3,000 pounds to 1,400, by “very carefully” slicing a lot of the basswood off the back of the frame.

The crew finally finished the frame in 2010. The crest was immediately put in a crate and delivered to the museum. The two 24-foot horizontal cross members of the frame, however, were too large for the museum’s elevator, and so they had to be physically carried up the Grand Staircase. “We sent it to the Met as soon as we were finished,” said Wilner, who, switching metaphors, remarked that the frame marks the peak of his career: “That’s the Everest.”

– Dimensions of Washington Crossing the Delaware: 12 feet high by 21 feet wide
– Dimensions of the frame, including crest: 18 feet high by 24 feet wide
– Dimensions of the completed crest: 14 feet across by 4 feet high
– Weight of the frame, plus hardware: 1,400 pounds.
– Initial estimate for gold leaf: 7,500 leaves
– Total gold leaf used: 12,500 leaves, costing over $12,000
– Smooth surface area of the frame: 250 square feet
– Some mysteries were solved: From the few letters visible in the Brady photographs, researchers determined the ribbon that rippled under the crest contained a phrase from Henry Lee’s 1799 eulogy for Washington: “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen”
– Some mysteries weren’t: Words in the corner shields were indistinct in the photos, and after some discussion, museum curators decided that the shields should be apple shaped with Rococo carving—no words included.