SPECIAL PROMOTION FOR PAINT CONSULTS!

Special Offer on Color Consults!

Limited time only.

$70 discount on all exterior paint consults

for summer 2013 painting season.

Visit the Historic Design Consulting website today!

Vintage 1890s advertisement  for
C.T. Raynolds Paint

The 2013 painting season has begun!  To kick off the new season Historic Design Consulting is offering a special promotion for House Color Consults.  If you are planning to paint your Victorian home or business this summer this is a special opportunity to save extra money while restoring your property using authentic Victorian colors. If you book your color consult during May or June of 2013, Historic Design Consulting will complete a custom color report for a discounted price of only $229.00 ($70 discount from regular price of $299).  When many consultants charge fees of $400 or even more for a color consultation, a custom report for only $229 is a real value.   If the clock is already ticking and you need your custom report in a hurry, Historic Design offers expedited consults for a modest upcharge of only $50.  To get started, please visit the Historic Design Webpage and click on the House Colors button today.  


Historic Design Consulting specializes in assisting home and business owners select color schemes that will  reflect the customer's tastes and be appropriate for the style, age and setting of their historic properties. We use period paint swatches, brochures and advertising to develop authentic, period color schemes that complement your home or business's surroundings and accent its special features.  Our reports include a custom color palette, color maps and specially prepared photos that show how your home will look when all the work is done. 


We hope to hear from you soon!

Historic Paint Colors for the Victorian Home: Part Two

Special Offer on Color Consults!

Limited time only.

$70 discount on all exterior paint consults

for summer 2013 painting season.

Click HERE for details or visit the Historic Design Consulting Website today! 

To view Part One of the Victorian Paint Colors post, click HERE.

In a previous post I described my process for selecting historic paint colors for 19^th century homes and businesses.  Rather than relying on so-called “Victorian” color collections from modern paint manufacturers such as Behr or Sherwin-Williams, I use period color swatches.  This way I can be sure to consider the same colors homeowners did 130 years ago and offer my customers a truly authentic color palette.

Color swatches printed on cards, however, were an innovation and widely available only after the Civil War.  So, how do I select colors for older homes?  First, I read what designers and architects wrote about house colors in the 19^th century.  Andrew Jackson Downing, Samuel Sloan and many others wrote in detail about  selecting paint colors and how they thought a paint scheme should be arranged.  By working my way through these primary sources I can get a good idea how Victorian homeowners and designers picked their color palettes.

Second, I need to know how paint was mixed.  When I read Downing's descriptions of paint colors such as drab or fawn it is essential to know which pigments were used so I can imagine how the paint might have looked.  Since painters tended to be a conservative lot who mixed paints using familiar recipes,  you can often look at later color swatches to get some idea of older paint colors.  Learning about these paint recipes and pigments is a reliable way to reconstruct an early color palette.   

19th century paint was mixed using four basic ingredients: linseed oil; white lead; turpentine and pigments.  Many of the pigments used before 1875 were earth pigments, or pigments mined or refined  from soil.  In other words, earth pigments are pretty colored dirt.

  

Here are a few examples that were commonly used in the 19th century.

Indian Red is ferric oxide that was originally mined on the Indian Subcontinent (thus its name).  Other deposits of ferric oxide have been discovered all over the world and several have names, including English Red or Venetian Red, that indicate the place of their origin.  Since this pigment was relatively cheap, barns and industrial buildings were frequently painted with paint containing Indian Red. 

Raw Umber is also named after its place of origin: Umbria, Italy.  It is a medium brown pigment refined from clay containing ferric oxide and manganese.  Raw Umber was widely used in the 19th century. 

  Pigments could be baked in ovens to drive out water and cause them to darken.  Compare this Burnt Umber sample to the Raw Umber sample above.

Burnt Sienna is a limonate clay containing ferric oxide that was originally mined around the city of Sienna in Tuscany, Italy.  

Other pigments, such as Prussian Blue and Chrome Green, were commonly used.  Unlike earth pigments, these pigments were produced in factories.  Although found in many paint recipes, several of these manufactured pigments were fugitive, meaning they tended to fade or discolor in sunlight.  This is why few 19th century houses were painted bright blue or purple since these paint recipes usually contained fugitive Prussian Blue. 

Earth pigments proved to be durable and were widely used until the 1870s when they began to be replaced by new pigments made from the by-products of the nascent petroleum industry.   This is why the bright, saturated colors commonly used in the 1890s on Queen Anne homes look out of place on earlier Italianate and Gothic Revival examples.    

For information about color consults for your historic home, visit the Historic Design Consulting website and click on the House Colors button.

Making a 19th Century Door: Or, Why do Modern Replacement Doors Look so Strange on 19th Century Homes

There are many differences between woodworking in today's machine age and the 19th century.  Carpenters and furniture makers today rely on measured drawings, dimensions, and precise measurements to help them plan and build things.  Before the Industrial Revolution, however, things were very different.  19th century house joiners relied on pattern books to be sure, but these books didn't contain measured plans with precise dimensions for Federal or Greek Revival doors, windows and moldings.  Instead, their pattern books had drawings with proportions. 

What do I mean by this?  Lets look at a 1797 plan book by Asher Benjamin and see.  If you wanted to build an interior door today you would buy a set of measured drawings for a 2/8, 2/10 or 3/0 door which would give you the standardized width of the stiles, bottom, top and lock rails, dimensions for the molding, etc.  If you look below at a plate from Benjamin's 18th century plan book, you will see that the drawings are far simpler.

Asher Benjamin, The Country Builder's Assistant
(1797)  plate 12.

The first thing to notice is the series of 9 marks beneath each door. Rather than dimensions, Benjamin instructs the joiner to divide the width of the door opening into 9 equal parts.  If you are building a 3/0 door, which is 36 inches in width (as in the example Benjamin gives here), you would have 9 parts of 4 inches each.  On the 4-panel door each stile, muntin and top rail is one part wide (or 4 inches), the bottom rail is 1 1/2 part wide (6 inches) and the lock rail is  2 1/2 parts wide (10 inches).   

The genius of this approach is its simplicity and flexibility.  If your door opening is an odd size like 2/9, 2/11 or 3/2 (as is common on older homes), you simply step off 9 parts on the door width with a pair of dividers and there you have your base measurement.  You then use the dividers to lay out the width of the stiles (1 divider step or part), the dimension of the bottom rail (1 1/2 divider step) and so on until you have your stock ready to cut and plane.   Regardless of how wide or narrow the door, the proportions of each component to the entire door are exactly the same.  

What's better yet is you don't even need a ruler or to know the dimension of the opening.   You simply mark the width of the opening on a scrap piece of wood, use your dividers to divide it into 9 parts and start laying out your door.  The idea of not knowing or needing the dimension of a door is hard for modern tradesmen to wrap their heads around, but in the 18th and 19th century this was standard procedure. 

Ca. 1849 Greek Revival Door

Why is this important? These differences in approach explain why modern replacement doors often look so odd in older homes.  In an age where everything is standardized (e.g. the width of door stiles and rails), when modern shops build odd-sized doors for older homes the proportions of the door parts are usually way off.  They just don't know the proportions and don't adjust their designs.

Whenever I visit an historic home I take careful measurements of doors, windows, molding and other millwork and determine the proportions of each piece. Then, if I make a hand-made door for a Greek Revival home I can check the measurements and proportions for doors in similar homes and use them to make the replacement.  Not only does my replacement door have the appropriate tool marks and construction for the 19th century, its proportions, molding and shape are also correct.

Wall Plaster in a 19th Century Log Cabin

When we think about the American frontier, images of isolation, privation and strenuous labor can come to mind.  Life on the frontier certainly was difficult and dangerous.  A homesteader’s first year was often a frantic race to establish his family before the winter’s first snow began to fall.  His first job was to cut timber which cleared land for planting crops and provided logs for building a cabin.  The wife and children might stay with a neighbor or even remain back east while their new house was being built and crops and garden planted.  Conditions in their new log home were primitive as most cabins had only dirt floors, almost no furniture and only a small, cast iron stove for heat and cooking.  However, once established in their new home pioneer families were eager to improve their cabins with siding, wooden floors, paint and plaster.  Even on the frontier people did their best to follow the latest fashions and keep up with the Joneses.

German immigrants Wilhelm and Sophia Ney homesteaded along the Minnesota River just east of Henderson, MN in the 1850s.  Wilhelm built a large 22’x 32’ cabin from maple and basswood logs in 1855 which served as the family's home until he built a larger house out of the local, cream colored Chaska brick.  The old cabin had been cocooned in board and batten siding and converted into a horse barn. However, despite being used to stable horses for many decades, remnants of the original daubing and lath and lime plaster have survived on the rear wall.

Exterior of the Ney cabin showing half dovetail notching and board and batten siding.

The cabin's  interior showing the hewn logs and rafters and plaster remnants.

19^th century plaster was made from lime, sand and sometimes animal hair and applied in up to three coats over wooden lath.  The plaster was mixed on site (the lime often coming from local deposits of limestone) and lath split or riven from trees felled in the area.  Wilhelm Ney split his lath from small branches of willow trees which were abundant along the nearby Minnesota River. The lath was nailed directly to the log walls with a straw backing which allowed the lime plaster to adhere more easily. 

Plaster remnants, lath and wooden pegs used to hold tack for the Neys' horses.

Close-up of the lath, plaster and straw.

Once the newly plastered walls had cured they could be white washed, painted with brightly tinted oil or kalsomine paint or even covered with fashionable wallpaper bought at the local dry goods store.   Indeed, some plaster, paint, siding and a new frame-and-panel door could make a log cabin look as refined as a frame house built in town.   Only its thick, log walls might betray its humble beginnings.

The Ney log cabin can be visited at the Ney Nature Center located just a few miles east of Henderson, MN along State Highway 19. 

An Artist's Look at The Landing's Cabinet Shop

Every year The Landing, a living history museum in Shakopee, MN, celebrates the holidays by holding the Folkways of the Holidays. This event is held on weekends in December and shows visitors how Christmas and Hanukkah were celebrated on the Minnesota frontier during the 19th century.  My friends Kevin Alto, Dave Winter and I are always on hand to man the cabinet shop and demonstrate how woodcraft used to be done during the good ol' days. Dave, the shop's Scandinavian flat carver/instrument repairman/fiddler/bowl turner and general entertainer, has developed yet another trade: watercolors.  This weekend he captured the essence of yours truly as I busily worked away on a small hanging cupboard.  

Here I am at the bench cutting some dovetails on the cupboard's carcass.

Here I am "repairing" a 19th century glide rocking chair with
what appears to be a medieval battle axe.

I think it looks just like me, though I usually only use my battle axe on larger projects.


Thanks Dave!  I've never looked better!

Tin Cans and House Paint in the 19th Century

Once in a while a seemingly simple invention or discovery ends up having significant and wide-ranging consequences.  One example is the tin can.  Today tin cans are so common that we give them little thought, but after the Civil War they were a novelty that truly revolutionized commerce, diet and help bring about a consumer society.  Among the many industries that cans changed was the production and marketing of  house paint, as they made it possible for the owners of Victorian homes and professionals alike to buy ready-mixed and colored paints.

At the beginning of the 19th century house paint had to be prepared by mixing ingredients such linseed oil, white lead, turpentine, driers and pigments.  Some of these ingredients were often only available in bulk containers such as wooden casks or barrels while the coloring pigments had to be ground by hand. This made it difficult for homeowners to mix small batches of paint for jobs around the house.  However, during the Victorian era tin cans not only made it possible for professional painters and homeowners to buy smaller amounts of paint, the paint was of better quality.  Since canned paints were mixed in factories in bulk, the quality was more consistent.  Whereas the color and consistency of hand mixed paints always varied slightly depending on the amounts and quality of the ingredients, commercial, ready-mixed paints were uniform.  Commercial manufacturers used  pigments that were finely ground by mills so the colors were even.  National brands such as Sherwin-Williams and John Lucas & Co. tested their different ingredients so they could avoid adulterated pigments and additives that were common on the consumer market.    

The John Lucas & Co. of Gibbsboro, NJ was one of the innovators during the last half of the 19th century and was among the first to package house paint in tin cans.  Founded in 1852 by the Englishman John Lucas, the company developed new pigments, improved the production process of white lead and was a pioneer in prepared and ready-mixed paints. 

This can of Indian red paint from around 1880 is an early example of John Lucas's ready-to-use paint.  The soldered lid was removed with a can opener and the contents poured into a bucket.  After additional boiled linseed oil was added to thin the paint, the professional painter or homeowner could brush it on the walls, ceilings and millwork.  Since the top was soldered, the can could not be resealed (Henry Sherwin patented the first resealable can in 1877) and all the paint had either to be used or the remainder stored in an airtight container.

A ca 1880 paint can (still full of paint).

Top of the paint can showing its soldered lid.

Although this little can might not look like much, it represents a revolution in the way house paint and hundreds of other products were marketed and used during the last half of the 19th century.  Small innovations certainly can have large and lasting consequences.

The Greek Revival: America's First National Building Style

The Greek Revival has always been my favorite American building style.  I find its simplicity appealing while its strength and solidity remind me of the growing confidence and wealth of the new republic.  The Greek Revival was significant because it was America's first national style.  Although based on a European precedents, its American form was unique and was found coast-to-coast during the first half of the 19th century.  This popularity was due principally to the widespread use of several pattern books, including Minard Lafever's The Modern Builder's Guide (New York, 1833) and Asher Benjamin's Practical House Carpenter: Being a Complete Development of the Grecian Orders of Architecture (Boston, 1830).  These pattern books were written for carpenters and house joiners who used the books' descriptions and lithographic plates as models for their own designs.

The Greek Revival was a favorite with the burgeoning East Coast merchant class.  The Whipple House of Salem, MA was built in 1843 and is a classic example of the new style.  Jonathan Whipple prospered after he established a factory in Salem around 1835 which sorted and processed copal,  an African resin which was used to make furniture and maritime varnish.

The house has several features typical of the Greek Revival, including Doric pilasters at the corners, a recessed doorway with rectangular sidelights and transom, and a wide entablature running the length of the front.  The trim around the front door is particularly striking and closely resembles a plate from Asher Benjamin's book Practical House Carpenter.

Jonathan Whipple House, Salem, MA, 1843

The Ard Godfrey House was built in 1849 and is the oldest remaining frame building in Minneapolis, MN.  Godfrey was a millwright who moved with his family from Maine after  Franklin Steele, a prosperous speculator and mill owner,  asked him to construct a sawmill at the Saint Anthony Falls.  Godfrey was one of the first permanent settlers around Minneapolis and is notable for being the first to bring dandelions seeds to the area.

The proportions and  shape of the Godfrey House resemble those of  the Whipple.   The house is symmetrical with a  similarly pitched roof.  However, its ornament is less bold.  The Godfrey House has Doric pilasters like the Whipple, but they are narrower and molding on the capitals is simpler.  The front door is not recessed but has rectangular sidelights and is framed by a temple-like door surround with two pilasters and a simple but strong entablature.  The Godfrey has a simple frieze board along the top of the wall rather than the Whipple's more elaborate entablature.

Ard Godfrey House, Minneapolis, MN, 1849.

Although these houses were built over a 1000 miles apart, they share many characteristic features of the Greek Revival.  As such, the Godfrey and Whipple houses are excellent examples which show the national character of the building style.