This section of cornice from the original door hood, which I talked about in my last post, has turned out to contain a wealth of information about the past, that has guided our plans for the recreation and decoration of the new door case.
Firstly, we asked paint analyst Cathy Britain to take a sample of the thick coating of paint on it. There turned out to be 42 schemes (equating to more than 80 layers of paint, counting the undercoats) since 1725. Meaning an average of 5 years between each redecoration until the mid 20th century.
The first scheme was a pale stone colour, that we’ve matched to a Brouns linseed oil paint, and plan to use as the base colour of our new scheme – for the windows and door case.
We discovered a very interesting technique 10 schemes in (approx mid to late 18th century) where a stone colour had a texture layer of sand added to enhance the illusion of stone. Watch the video to see more. Sanding was used extensively in the 18th and 19th centuries (and was used for the exterior of Kenwood House in Hampstead around the same time as this layer), but is rarely seen today.
We’re going to experiment with using sanding for the new door case, which should give the illusion of the pillars and cornices etc being made of stone rather than timber.
Unfortunately we don’t know what colour the front door will have been, as we have no remains of the original door – in the early 18th century, all external joinery except the front door is likely to have been painted a single colour. However, in the 19th and start of 20th centuries, there were many grained layers found on the cornice – a technique where timber, usually pine, is painted to resemble oak or marble. And we have the 1909 photo showing the original external shutters with oak graining and the door case with marble graining.
So we’ve decided to use oak graining for our new external shutters and front door, which completes our scheme for the exterior joinery.
For more a more detailed look at the paint analysis process, watch the video below
