Welsh Color & Conservation, Inc. Analysis of Historic ... Color & Conservation, Inc. Analysis of...

Welsh Color & Conservation, Inc. Analysis of Historic Paints and Wallpapers P.O. Box 767 Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-0767 Tel: 610-525-3564 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.welshcolor.com

July 6, 2010 Phillipsburg Area Historical Society c/o Dr. Frank L. Greenagel 104 South Main Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865 Re: Roseberry House Age and Significance of Wall Stencils Dear Dr. Greenagel: The wall stencils that survive in the Center Hall and three of the four first floor rooms at Roseberry House are extraordinary survivors of a genre of American decorative wall painting that became popular in the early 19th century up and down the east coast, but primarily in the New England states. The subject of early American wall painting and stenciling was explored and written about extensively in the early-to-mid part of the 20th century by two individuals from New England, Janet Waring and Nina Fletcher Little. Their research is presented in their richly illustrated books, Early American Stencils and American Decorative Wallpainting, 1700 – 1850 respectively. Their scholarship informs us that many wall stencil patterns at that time, like those at the Roseberry House, appear to be inspired by the patterns of and from the increasing use and popularity of wallpapers in the American home. However, stencil patterns painted on walls were not as expensive as purchasing and hanging wallpapers. As time passed and fashions changed, wallpapers were most often stripped from walls, thus destroying the evidence of the elaborate patterns and colors that once decorated a room. On the other hand, the stencils, which were painted by hand and usually by itinerant artists, were simply covered over with another layer of paint, or sometimes wallpaper, thus encapsulating the artwork for discovery at a later time. When they are discovered, as they have been at the Roseberry House, they create significant interest and a desire to save and learn from them. They represent another dimension of cultural heritage that is embodied within the historic house. In order to put any stencil patterns in context within the history of early American decorative wall painting, it is essential to determine their age relative to the construction date of the house in which they are found. The determination of relative age can be accomplished not only by physical investigations such as analyses of the relevant building’s fabric, but also by researching published references as well as historic documents associated with property ownership. To accomplish this task at the Roseberry House, I visited the site on May 21st and 25th to investigate and survey the relevant interior architectural fabric such as the plaster, molding

Roseberry House July 6, 2010 profiles, paint layers, and nails, etc. You provided me with a summary of your research on the chain of title, history of ownership and thoughts on who built the house. EVALUATION OF THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

• Nails:

One of the most useful techniques in dating building fabric is to extract and examine the nails used to attach wood lath and trim, as nails have a known history of manufacture. To assist in the evaluation process we refer to Lee H. Nelson’s, Nail Chronology as an Aid to Dating Old Buildings, published in 1968. In this Technical Leaflet that was published in 1968 by the American Association for State and Local History, there are illustrations to which one can compare nails from a building. Two that illustrate early machine cut nails (1790 -1830) have direct relevance to the five nails that I pulled at the Roseberry House from the lath, door trim and mantelpieces in the first and second floor rooms.

Two of the earliest nails I pulled are from the hand-split lath in the first floor Northeast Room (104) and from the simple ogee molding of the trim of the doorway in the first floor Southwest Parlor (102a). Neither one is dated earlier than the 1790’s and both are illustrated in the frame to the left above and in photos below.

Roseberry House July 6, 2010

This lath nail that is 1” long corresponds to the lath nail described above -- dating from between 1790 – 1810 and is illustrated on the right in the left frame.

This nail from the doorway trim that is 1 ¼” long corresponds to the early machine cut nail with hand made head described above in the middle of the left frame -- dating from between mid 1790’s to 1805.

Two of the other three nails were pulled from the mantelpieces in the first floor Northwest Parlor(102b) and in the second floor Southeast Bedroom (206). Both are post-1810, completely machine cut nails that are illustrated in the frame to the right above and in the photos below. More information about the potential age of these two mantelpieces follows.

This sprig from the first floor Northwest Parlor that is ¾” long corresponds to the sprig described above and illustrated on the right of the frame to the right.

This nail from the second floor Southeast Bedroom that is 1 ½” long corresponds to the nail described above and illustrated in the middle of the frame to the right.


The fifth nail (at left) was pulled from the hand-split lath in the second floor Southeast Bedroom. It is an early machine-headed cut nail with a rounded shank that dates from between 1815’s – 1830’s and is illustrated in the left frame above. This lath nail is very different from and in contrast to the earlier lath nail pulled from the first floor Northeast Room. The difference between the two seems to suggest that the second floor rooms were finished slightly later than the first floor rooms.

In summary, all of the nails examined provide consistent evidence that the trim they are associated with date to ca. 1790’s for the earliest and up to ca. 1830’s for the latest.

• Molding Profiles

The profiles of moldings on millwork can also provide useful clues to the general age of building fabric. For example: the simple ogee backband moldings on the trim of the first floor interior doorway are those that were typically used throughout most of the 18th century. On the other hand, the compound backband moldings on the trim of the front exterior doorway and the doorway to the kitchen addition (originally an exterior doorway) are stylistically more typical to the Federal period, i.e. approximately 1790 to 1815, as are the moldings of the raised panels on these two frames as well as


the doors. The paneling of the staircase shares the same molding profiles as the front and side exterior doors and doorways. In addition, the surviving original window sashes are stylistically more typical of the Federal period with their thinner and more delicate muntin profiles compared to the

heavy, wide muntins that are typical of mid-18th century sashes. The round moldings under the shelf of the mantelpiece in the second floor Southeast Bedroom are stylistically closer to 1815 – 1820 than to the late 1790’s. The nails pulled from this mantelpiece and from the lath on the walls in the room both support this observation. The mantelpieces in the South and Northwest Parlors (photos below) both appear stylistically to be from the ca. 1830’s to 1840’s and were installed when the partition between the two rooms was removed. The nail pulled from the Northwest Parlor mantel was made after 1810. (More information about the paint on the mantels follows.)

Mantelpiece in the second floor Southeast Bedroom ((206)

In summary, the molding profiles suggest the trim examined dates to the Federal period.

• Franklin Fireplace

Franklin fireplaces were very popular in the early 1800’s. The one inserted into the fireplace opening in the Southwest Parlor (left) appears to be slightly later – possibly ca. 1820 because it does not have the curved jambs that extend and curve outward from the frame like those made in the early 1800’s. An excellent resource for information on the Franklin fireplaces was published in 1971 in Volume III, Nos. 2-3, of the Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology.

Southwest Parlor (102a) mantelpiece and Franklin fireplace


• Plaster

The plaster surround of the fireplace opening in the Southwest Parlor exhibits the inclined leaf border stencil on a dark gray ground. When the Franklin fireplace was installed into the opening, it did not fit exactly and the space between them was filled in with plaster and then painted with a dark gray paint (arrow) to match the existing ground coat of the stencil pattern. This strongly suggests that the Franklin fireplace was installed when the stencil in the room was still relatively new, i.e. within a few years.

• Paint on Trim

I took a few samples from trim in the first floor Southwest Parlor. Several were from the trim of the doorway to the Center Hall and the other was from the mantelpiece. The sample from the mantelpiece exhibits the most useful information. The first finish layer on it is a yellowish white, lead-based paint; however, the second paint layer is a white that does not contain lead. Most likely it is a zinc-based paint. Zinc based paints were not produced until ca. 1850 and that is probably when this paint was made and applied. The first and largest manufacturer of zinc paints in America was New Jersey Zinc, from Newark. If this second finish white paint layer is ca. 1850, then the original yellowish white paint layer is approximately 10-to-15 years earlier, or ca. 1835 to 1840. This appears to corroborate the observation of the stylistic age of the mantelpiece described above. This white paint is about the fourth finish paint layer on the ca. 1790 - 1800 trim of the doorway to the Center Hall. If the interior trim (not the plaster) of the house was repainted every ten years, then this also places an approximate date of the mantelpiece to ca. 1830 – 1840. Of incidental interest to note here is that the trim of the doorway at the baseboard height was painted the dark baseboard color several times. • Paint on Plaster

I sampled the wall paints at the stenciling in the Northwest and Southwest Parlors (102a & b) and also in the Center Hall (101). The plaster was coated with white lime whitewash originally in all rooms. Subsequently they all were recoated with white lime whitewash numerous times. Obtaining an accurate count of white lime whitewashes is difficult because they are so fragile. However, the ones with the most layers were from the Center Hall. On those, I counted approximately 15 layers of whitewash below the paint layer upon which the stenciling was applied. There are accounts of houses in Philadelphia in the 18th c. suggesting that the plaster walls of principle rooms were refreshed with a new coat of whitewash every year. (This possibility is likely since there is no


discernable dirt layer between the layers of whitewash.) If this was done at Roseberry House on walls where nails and trim suggest a date of ca. late 1790’s, then it is very likely that the stenciling was painted on the walls in the first floor rooms and Center Hall in about 1815.

EVALUATION OF THE STENCIL PATTERN • Condition The overall condition of the stenciling in the Center Hall and three first floor rooms is poor. The patterns are, in some cases barely discernable and in others non-existent because of loss of paint and/or plaster due to water penetration when the house was abandoned. In the two western rooms (now a double parlor), portions of the patterns have been revealed recently on the interior partition walls by scraping away the many layers of later paint that had been applied to the stenciling. These areas exhibit the best evidence of patterns and coloration. In the Center Hall, remnants of the pattern are discernable on a wall that was covered by a pipe chase near the front doorway and also on the staircase ceiling. This is the only area where the stenciling is apparent on a ceiling area and suggests that it may have been on the ceilings of other rooms too. There is only one small area of stenciling remaining in the Northeast Room on a small fragment of original wainscot plaster on a partition wall. • Stencil Pattern Motifs The pattern motifs were not studied in detail for this effort, but overall they exhibit three or four typical motifs: a border pattern, a wainscot pattern, an upright pattern creating vertical panels above the chair railing, and a central pattern within the panels. Three of these general motifs are exhibited in a ca. 1810 wall stencil from the Harper House in Philadelphia that I researched and wrote about in the APT Bulletin in 1973. It is illustrated to the right. Notice:

1. The border pattern; it is created with inclined leaves.

2. The upright pattern, within it is a foliate pattern created with brush strokes originating at a central stem.

3. The central pattern below the urn that has a daisy-like pattern as the central element.

4. That there is an extensive use of dots in both the border and the upright patterns.

5. The pattern appears to be very much in imitation of wallpaper.

Harper House Stencil, ca. 1810, Philadelphia


These elements appear in the stencil pattern at the Roseberry House and are illustrated in the following photographs.

Northeast Room (104) Fragment Northwest Room (102b) Upper Wall Center Hall (101) Staircase Ceiling

Southwest Room (102a) Wainscot

• Coloration of the Stencil Patterns With the exception of the use of a bright reddish orange on the central panel motifs, the coloration is largely monochromatic employing extensive use of white, light, medium and very dark grays. The wainscot ground color in the Parlor stencils is a very dark gray, almost black, and makes these


patterns exceptional, especially with the contrasting use of the reddish orange. These colors are illustrated in the close-up views of the patterns below.

Pattern Coloration in the Parlor Stencils (Three photos above by Frank L. Greenagel)

• Age and Significance of the Stencils

The physical and stylistic evidence coupled with the preponderance of examples of stenciling from the early 19th c., as discussed at length by Waring and Little, suggest a date of ca. 1810-1815 for the stencils at the Roseberry House. Their significance rests primarily in the fact that so few examples of stenciling are known to survive in the mid-Atlantic region. Also of significance is their age – they are now approximately 200 years old. Even though the amount of the evidence is greatly reduced from what it was originally and the evidence that survives is in large part still hidden and/or very degraded, enough survives in good condition to merit wide-spread recognition as an important piece of history, not only for this house but also for the history of American decorative wall painting in New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic States. Lamentably, so little is known about the itinerant artists who created and painted these types of wall decorations, attribution is impossible. Their survival and discovery at the Roseberry House is exceptionally remarkable.

Roseberry House July 6, 2010 RECOMMENDATIONS

Because of the great significance of the stencils at the Roseberry House we urge quick action for their recordation and long-term preservation. For recording, more elements of the patterns in the Parlors need to be revealed. Ceilings need to be probed also for evidence of stencils. Subsequently all of the patterns should be comprehensively photographed, traced and drawn up like the one illustrated at the Harper House in Philadelphia. Their paints and pigments should be analyzed and their original colors matched. Crossection photomicrographs should be made to visually record the paint layer structure. At the same time, a complete investigation and analysis of the paints and colors used on the trim throughout the interior of the house should be undertaken. A comparison of layers from element to element within each space will contribute to the relative dating of the progression of building and alterations that are apparent, especially between the first and second floor. For preservation, the building envelope should be secured to manage moisture penetration. This includes not only the roofing, window and door openings and masonry pointing but also water drainage around the structure including run off and splashing from traffic traveling on the adjacent road way. Temperature and humidity should be managed effectively with ventilation from basement to attic to avoid excessive extremes.

Thank you for inviting me to consult with you on this project. Should you have any questions concerning our findings and recommendations, please let me know. Sincerely,

Frank S. Welsh, FAPT President, Welsh Color and Conservation, Inc.

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