Vivid View: The Art & Science of Paint Analysis

Architectural paint analysis reveals the original wall decorations in a room, and how it was repainted over time. Remarkably, every room of Wilton House retains the full strata of each layer of paint.

This cross-section from Stratford Hall’s dining room documents the paint history of the interior from 1795 to 1937, suggesting the changing tastes that occurred with the passage of time.

Captured here are the small pigment particles that were gently scraped from a fragment of green wallpaper photographed 1000 times its original size under plane polarized transmitted light.

This is a cross-section of wallpaper from Montpelier in normal light; the next image shows this sample in UV light. Materials respond to each light source differently, aiding identification efforts.

Examining the wallpaper fragment under ultraviolet light reveals seven layers of materials: starch paste adhesive, rag-based paper, red paint, shellac adhesive, and red wool fibers trapped by two later layers of paint.

Blue flocking was adhered to this light blue block-printed paint while still wet. As cobalt blue was unavailable until c.1810, this wallpaper could not have been part of Eyre Hall’s eighteenth-century decoration.

This c.1758 sample from a Mount Vernon bedchamber records 19 generations of baseboard paint, including the earliest red-brown color popular in the mid-18th century. The uneven nature of the brown paints is typical of hand-mixed and applied paints.

This cross-section from a pantry baseboard at the Bernard Ghequiere House (c.1797) provides insight into the use and treatment of 18th-century service areas. Disrupted early paint layers shows this space was active, and trapped grime reveal that the painters did not clean before repainting.

The bluish sparkle of the cream-colored paint taken from a privately-owned Williamsburg house is a phenomenon of the pigment zinc white seen under reflected UV light. This material dates the layer to the mid-19th century, when zinc white began to be used.

Silk fibers from an 18th-century lady’s shoe found at Clermont and viewed 200-400 times magnification reveals them to lack a central lumen indicative of plant fibers or a scale pattern indicative of wood. Now degraded to a dark brownish color, these silk fibers were originally pink.

This dramatic paint stratigraphy from the dining room’s fireplace mantel at Eppington (c. 1770) illustrates what can happen to paints when exposed to heat. The earliest paints are partially melted and deformed, and there are deep cracks extending downward from the most recent layers at the top.

This multi-colored cross-section came from a circa 1750 desk case that stands nearly 8' in the collection of Mount Vernon. Made by cabinetmaker Robert Walker (1710-1775) and now owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, this important piece was freshened with new paint on a regular basis.

This cross-section documents the entire history of Wilton. From original decoration to nostalgic restoration, it provides a compelling backdrop for understanding the people who occupied its spaces, from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century and all those in-between.