By the 1940s the picture rail was passé, and the invisible wall hook standard. Today you might consider picture rails and hooks against wallpaper and in public rooms, along with modern hangers in halls, bathrooms, even bedrooms.

A more streamlined approach came along with the lowered ceiling heights and minimal moldings of the 1920s and ’30s. Now the picture rail was mounted just a half-inch or so from the ceiling. The old brass hooks no longer fit, but hooks with a rolled profile and wires were used. The gap was often lost in subsequent ceiling repairs—or even caulked over—making the molding useless. Using a Picture Rail Today Around the 1840s, picture rails or picture molding became common. The idea had been around since the 15th century: hanging pictures from a moveable hook that can hold substantial weight and that doesn’t mar the wall surface. The modern picture rail was simply a horizontal molding of wood or composition material, often decorative, mounted high on the wall. Portraits and tapestries may have hung on the walls of castles, but for most householders, “picture hanging” became popular during the Victorian period of the 19th century. The newly affluent, and even the middle classes, demonstrated their buying power and good taste by covering the walls with paintings and other works of framed art—not to mention mirrors, shelves, plates, and so on—using picture rails. Two ribbon-covered wires attach to hooks in a picture rail placed immediately under the cornice in an “Elizabethan” Arts & Crafts house. Plain finial for either 20mm or 25mm rail. We supply plastic inserts which screw into the finial and are then pushed into the end of the rail.