Rollo Whately Picture Framing

41 St James’s Place, London SW1  ~  0207 629-7861


Regular opening hours are 10am – 5pm each weekday


Rollo Whately Ltd. is a small business in central London selling antique and modern picture frames and offering all services associated with the framing of paintings and works on paper.

41-reflections-in-window-aWe are located off St James’s Street, close to many picture dealers and restorers of fine art and the auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Our clients also include museums here and abroad as well as private individuals.

We aim to offer a discreet, high quality service to our customers – quickly and at reasonable prices.

Photo: Zachary Culpin/ BNPS

Rollo Whately has worked with antique picture frames for many years. He started the business 22 years ago and has built up a stock of fine antique frames to suit all types of artwork. Rollo still does most of the finishing of reproduction/restored frames himself and much of the fitting of artwork and final checking of work before it is delivered to the client. Borys Burrough has been here for over ten years now, took some time away to do a woodcarving course and is now back three days a week. Virginia Brix is sadly no longer working here but continues to keep in touch in her new job.

We are also lucky to have established relationships with various craftsmen and women in and around London.  The quality of their work often surprises even me.  Here is one, perhaps, in the making –

Cecil-gilding

Borys oil-gilding a frame with the help of our 4 year old intern

Updated… time runs… The intern is eight now and looking quite the pro!

Another four years and now learning the pleasures and frustrations of polishing a black ripple frame for a client –


You can find us at 41 St James’s Place, London SW1A 1NS.

Telephone No. +44 (207) 629 7861

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Please note that all photographs of frames on this website are copyrighted by the owner.  If you do use one of them a link/mention would be appreciated.  Thank  you.

By all means telephone us with any enquiries  – there was a ‘contact form’ here but all I got was messages in cyrillic, I suspect not frame-related.  If you do want to send a message use my name (alloneword) at my name dot com.

Finally, please also note that while the very idea of ‘cookies’ is anathema to me, I rather think wordpress use them for their websites and there may be some very basic ones installed on your device as you read this and continuing to do so is an acceptance of this.  More details can be found in the ‘Small Print’ section of the website.