More about painted finishes

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2005 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Two articles in this issue shed light on the types of paint available to Americans during the nineteenth century. One examines the paints used by fraktur artists (see pp. 128-135), and the other focuses on paints the Shakers employed (pp. 80-87). The scientific findings detailed in these articles are also relevant to the study of American painted furniture, another popular area of the decorative arts. Rufus Porter, himself a decorative painter as well as a published scientist, remarked in 1845 that as many as three out of every four doors in New England were painted to simulate a wood superior in quality to that from which they were made. Grain painting most likely began as a way to make a piece of furniture or woodwork look more expensive than it actually was. However, it turned into something much more imaginative and artistic in the hands of artisans skilled at wielding a comb, feather, sponge, handful of putty, brush, and a variety of other tools.

An exhibition on view at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City from September 20 to March 26, 2006, comprises about thirty examples of painted furniture made from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century and a selection of manuals, workboxes, and tools these artists used. All the exhibits are drawn from the museum's excellent collection. The show is entitled Surface Attraction: Painted Furniture from the American Folk Art Museum, and it covers the range of decorative techniques used to embellish simple pieces of furniture. Among these are smoke graining (executed with a candle), dry graining (achieved by squeezing most of the paint off the brush), stenciling, and freehand painting. A rare and illuminating survival is a box of ten samples of various decorative painting techniques (illustrated above) made sometime in the 1820s. The box belonged to the New Hampshire artisan Moses Eaton Jr. and confirms the brilliant range of colors then available.

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Stenciled decoration made possible the mass-production of fancy furniture. The chair manufactory established by Lambert Hitchcock in Riverton, Connecticut, in 1818 was one such successful enterprise. Knockdown chairs were shipped to retailers in the major cities in the United States. These were decorated using stencils and bronze powders (which were less expensive than paints) with motifs such as cornucopias, baskets of flowers, trailing vines, and a wide variety of decorative patterns.

There is no catalogue of this exhibition, but an article by the museum's curator, Stacy C. Hollander, will be published in the winter edition of the museum's magazine Folk Art. It may be purchased by telephoning 212-265-1040, extension 124. A daylong symposium is scheduled for Saturday. November 12. For information and to register telephone 212-265-1040, extension 105.