AFA Winter 2017

Winter 116 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Fig. 8: Logan Family tammy whole-cloth quilt, ca. 1720–1740. The primary face is a hot-pressed glazed or calendared indigo wool; the old fustic secondary side is a looser weave. 102 x 103 inches. Photo by Will Brown. The quilted sunflowers combined with the maple furniture add a subtle American sensibility to the yellow lodging room. Fig. 6: The four sides of the best bedchamber, Grantham, 1729. This watercolor sketch by the physician and clergyman William Stukeley shows a high chest, set of early Georgian chairs, pair of sconce glasses, and a flying tester bedstead in his own house. Gough Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, U.K. Fig. 5: Miniature House, 1730, Uppark House and Garden, West Sussex, National Trust, U.K. (NT 138073). The Uppark doll’s house includes three flying tester bedsteads among its furnishings, one red and gold damask with gold trim and one yellow with red trim, reinforcing the popularity of red and gold color schemes in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. damask” bed and window curtains. The architectural finishes study, conducted by Catherine Myers and Catherine Matsen, identified the original yellow paint on the wood architectural surfaces as a lead white with yellow and reddish brown iron oxide (ochre) pigments bound with linseed oil. The study found no evidence of wallpaper, furring strips for upholstery, or pigment on the plaster walls. Because this and numerous Stenton paint studies dating back to the 1950s have found layers of white lime wash on the plaster throughout the house, the plaster has been repaired and repainted with simulated whitewash. As part of the study, Myers removed paint from the entire backside of one of the interior shutters, exposing a large swath of the original paint layer. Although not grained or glazed, the smooth and lustrous paint bore a striking resemblance to the color of shellacked maple wood. 9 The subtle variations, unachievable with modern homogenized paint, bolstered the case for repainting the room with a replicated finish made from hand- ground ochre pigments with titanium white in place of lead, suspended in linseed oil. Historical painters Christopher Mills and Erika Sanchez Goodwillie created and applied the new paint over the previous layers in the room, separated by a new shellac barrier and a yellow tinted primer, using traditional brushes and methods. The result is a more luminous surface than the flat modern mustard-brown paint of the 1980s. A promising source for the color to dye the damask, which had arrived undyed as “greige goods,” was the Logan settee, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, upholstered in a reproduction yellow wool damask because of original fibers found on the object in 1978. Richard Newman at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, simultaneously worked to identify the khaki-gold of the secondary side of a Logan family tammy whole-cloth quilt from Stenton’s collection (Fig. 8). He detected morin , a signature compound from a dye known as “old fustic,” which comes from the heartwood of a South American tree, dyer’s mulberry. Old fustic produces economical colorfast yellows that can be strong and dark or warm and peachy in tone. This color description was congruent with the settee’s described “gold with a reddish hue.” The textile’s warm reddish golds aligned with a paint comprised of yellow ochre with a bit of red ochre. The paint in turn resembled the color of maple, the wood that predominated the seating and case furniture in the room. All the evidence pointed to the idea that the intentional effect of the yellow lodging room may have been a harmonious combination of warm golden textiles, paint, and honey-colored furniture, perhaps in a distinctly North American taste, as maple was seldom used for furniture making in England during this time period. The yellow lodging room has revealed itself to be a veritable eighteenth-century yellow “maple bedroom.” Stenton, Philadelphia, Pa., is open to visitors from April through December 23, and otherwise by appointment. For additional images and information, see www.stenton.org. St enton survives largely through the work of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Laura C. Keim is Stenton’s curator and a lecturer for the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate program in historic preservation .