PRESERVATION: Paint Job

 

On an idyllic summer afternoon at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Ellen Spear, the museum’s president and CEO, leads an impromptu tour of the Brick Dwelling. Shafts of sunlight illuminate Room 16 on the second floor, but the sun is hardly necessary—the floor is painted a rich yellow ocher, the woodwork a hot lemon hue. “You can come in on the dullest day and it feels very bright, very warm,” Spear asserts. A built-in case of drawers in the corner is a rich, earthy red, and the adjacent built-in yellow cupboard houses a stack of oval boxes in primary colors. A blue-green blanket chest, a pair of green bedsteads, and two red tables add to the vibrant palette.

 

Contrary to the prevalent notion that the Shakers embraced function and simplicity at the expense of embellishment, modern analysis of paint and pigments reveals the group’s love of bold color. The surprisingly intense colors in Room 16 replicate the appearance of the building’s interior when it was built in 1830, a time when the population at Hancock Shaker Village was at its height, with 338 members. “Our philosophy as far as paint color goes is to restore the buildings to the period of their highest use,” Spear explains. The restoration of vivid hues in Room 16 turned out to be part of an ongoing series of projects at the museum; the most recent addition of color has been to the clerestory and cupola, now a deep buttery yellow, of the famous Round Stone Barn.

 

“In our master plan, we want to restore every building,” Spear explains, looking chic and professional in a simple gray frock, even with a pair of puffy blue shoe covers, meant to protect the original floors, over her sandals. The Brick Dwelling could be restored to reflect one period of time or several. “It would be interesting to see three different eras,” she muses, but first, there is more research—including additional paint analysis—to be done. “Our first concern,” she says, “is to make all the buildings structurally sound.”

 

From approximately 1820 to 1850, when the Shaker communities were thriving, bold colors were often used on buildings and furniture. Later in the nineteenth century, much of that was removed and replaced with varnish. And in the early to mid-twentieth century, wallpaper and linoleum were in use on the upper floors of the Brick Dwelling.

 

Choosing historically accurate paint colors can’t be done by eye, Spear says. The pigments and binders used by the Shakers could have oxidized, changing color over time. With improved scientific techniques for paint analysis—in use for the last ten to fifteen years, including cross-section microscopy—conservators take samples to analyze layer by layer, identifying the original colors by discovering the pigments used.

 

When Susan L. Buck, an expert paint conservator in private practice, came to Hancock Shaker Village in 2002 to research the original paint colors in the 1830 Brick Dwelling, she collected extensive samples. Her analysis of the material from Room 16 revealed that the woodwork had been painted chrome yellow (made of lead chromate, which darkens over time); a built-in case of drawers was originally stained with a mixture of red lead and red ocher; and that a double cupboard was also chrome yellow. The floor had been painted yellow ocher at least twice.

 

The next year, using the results of Buck’s research, Christian Goodwillie, HSV curator of collections at the time, worked with a small team to restore the original colors in Room 16, replicating the Shaker materials and methods as closely as possible. Pigments used in the early nineteenth century included iron oxides found in the earth, such as red and yellow ocher, and lead-based red, white, or chromes. Prussian blue and chrome green, made by combining chrome yellow and Prussian blue, were also popular with the Shakers.

 

A letter written in 1832 by William Deming, a Hancock elder, offers clues to the Shaker use of color as well, describing the Brick Dwelling thusly: The house is … handsomely stained inside with a bright orange color. The outer doors are green. The outside of the house is painted with four coats of a beautiful red.

 

The Shaker Millennial Laws, in 1821, were codified to give continuity from one community to the next, Spear explains, and include instructions on paint colors for buildings and for furniture. One of the directives is that bedsteads should be green—Spear says that they don’t know why this is—and so the two sturdy Shaker bedsteads in Room 16 are a deep green, the original paint now a little worn, and probably somewhat darker than it once was.

 

“Shaker furniture was to be simple, practical, and easy to care for,” Spear says. The Millennial Laws stipulate that “beadings, mouldings, and cornices, which are merely for fancy, may not be made by Believers.” But a coat of paint protected the wood and made the furniture more durable as well as pleasing to the eye.

 

Once aware of the early Shaker preference for bold hues, visitors will find colorful treasures throughout the Brick Dwelling. In the Deaconesses’ Room (Room 15 on the second floor), a built-in wall cabinet shows the remains of its original red wash; the ocher inside the cabinet door is still bright. In the room furnished as the Sisters’ Sewing Room, a large counter with built-in drawers underneath is bright yellow; a smaller worktable is red. There is a bright blue trunk in the Deacons’ Room, displayed near a dark red pegboard for storing keys. And on the first floor is a freestanding cupboard in a glorious golden shade, the wood grain and ocher paint a perfect match.
 

Lenox, Massachusetts, antiques dealer Charles Flint, a tall man with a genial manner, takes great pride in selling Shaker furniture with its original paint or finish. On a midsummer morning, he settles into a wing chair in his office to share just a fraction of what he knows about Shaker furniture. It was quite a few years ago, Flint recounts, that a customer asked him why much of the furniture at Hancock Shaker Village had been stripped. He was stumped, Flint says, chuckling, so he went to John Ott, director of HSV at the time, for an answer. Ott explained that the museum’s holdings were made up of donations from collectors, many of whom had stripped off the paint. Eventually the Shakers themselves stripped a lot of their furniture, too. Flint bought Shaker furniture from private homes, and those pieces, he says, had a better chance of surviving intact.

 

“In the early days,” Flint says, “red was probably the most common … dull, flat, and very beautiful. And of course the Shakers loved yellow; there are two different yellows they used, a chrome yellow and the ocher.”

 

In the nineteenth century, paint was made, not purchased, according to a variety of formulas. For example, pigment would be ground into linseed oil; paints made in this way were often very thin and not always long-lasting. The color on a lot of the oval boxes, Flint explains, was either painted or washed on; it would come off easily over a period of time as the boxes were cleaned. “So that’s why there’s a tremendous premium on color, because it was so thin and so easily washable that it survived against all odds,” Flint says. “Collectors pay a premium for pieces that [have] survived, whether it’s an oval box or a Shaker piece, and for some reason the red and yellow are the quintessential color for the Shakers.”

 

Lesley Herzberg, collections manager at Hancock Shaker Village, steps in to continue the tour, leaving the Brick Dwelling and crossing Route 20 to the Meetinghouse. The original meeting house here has been dismantled; the one currently on the site was built in Shirley, Massachusetts, in 1793, and moved to the village in 1962. It’s painted white on the outside, as stipulated by the Millennial Laws.

 

Back in the summer of 2005, Herzberg was an intern and participated in painting the interior of the Meetinghouse, another major color restoration project at HSV. The Millennial Laws suggest that all Shaker meeting houses be painted “a bluish shade within,” and paint research reveals that Prussian blue, a dark, almost navy tone, was the favored color. Herzberg recalls grinding and mixing the paint by hand, following a Shaker formula of linseed oil, Prussian blue pigment, and chalk. “It took about ten work days,” she remembers. The walls are white, the benches are brown, and all of the wood trim is now the specified deep Prussian blue.

 

The next stop on this walk down Shaker memory lane is at the Sisters’ Dairy and Weave Shop and the Brethren’s Shop, the exteriors of which were painted a striking pumpkin ocher color, with dark green window frames, in 2007. The vibrant orange buildings are eye-catching—and visible from Route 20; the current shade is as it was from about 1830 to 1850.

 

Over an alfresco summer lunch at the Village Harvest Café on-site, Spear discusses the most recent interpretation of the Shakers’ use of color at the museum, citing the familiar white cupola and clerestory on the Round Stone Barn that are now a creamy yellow. The 1826 structure needed a new roof and the clerestory required repairs, giving researchers the opportunity to discover the original color of the wooden part of the building before the carpentry was done.

 

“Thirty-five samples of paint were taken and analyzed from the clerestory at the Round Stone Barn to get the right color,” says Spear. The buttery yellow ocher that now covers the top of the barn represents the color used in 1880. “We agonized a bit because the building is so iconic, but decided to be true to our preservation philosophy and restore the color.”

 

The original hue was matched with contemporary paint, and the clerestory and cupola were painted last spring; the window frames were completed over the summer.

 

“I think it looks distinctive in a different way now,” Spear affirms. “I think it will look magnificent in the autumn, with the fall foliage.” The exterior of the Trustees’ Office is the next priority. “Each discovery gives us new insight into the Shaker world,” Spear explains. “Each addition of original color gives us a better sense of how it fits into the landscape and helps us preserve the architectural record.” [SEPTEMBER 2009]

 

Lesley Ann Beck is a senior editor at Berkshire Living and managing editor of BBQ: Berkshire Business Quarterly.

 

THE GOODS

Hancock Shaker Village
Route 20
Pittsfield, Mass.

www.hancockshakervillage.org

Charles L. Flint Antiques
.
Lenox, Mass.

www.flint.cc