Hey Vic, what you are seeing is the back side of the wood carvings - at least that's my interpretation. That said, I know of at least one other builder who agrees with you and he chose to plank the back side of the framing. His turned out nice and clean so I might reconsider once I see what it looks like to see the back of the carved decorations...
The image that I am showing is quite rare! I can only find 4 or 5 views of this part of the ship - and only 2 show this level of detail. Unless someone has personal knowledge (they visited the museum) getting this part right is not a slam dunk. For the record, my version is somewhat imperfect: the horizontal element near the bottom should be straight - but DeAg forced me to build that piece as a curve because of the decorative cast metal piece that is forthcoming...
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Building this framework was not hard at all (notwithstanding the significant injury I sustained with my xacto blade). But getting it to fit onto a kit that had no intention of including it (and making it look like it belonged) was quite a challenge. I spent 10x the time noodling on how to do this than I did making it! But I am learning that is simply part of the fun...