Hidden Images Emerge in Conservation Lab

In 1998, The Connecticut Historical Society began a comprehensive effort to document and conserve its collection of sixty-five tavern and inn signs, the largest collection of its kind in the nation. The project included extensive research on Connecticut’s tavern keepers, which aided in dating and establishing the provenance of many inn signs, not only those in the CHS collection but also in other public and private collections. Parallel to this research, the CHS also began to address the collection’s conservation needs, with the assistance of a team from the Williamstown Art Conservation Center (WACC) in Williamstown, Mass.

"The conservation work," according to Dr. Susan P. Schoelwer, CHS Director of Museum Collection, "has contributed exciting new insights to our understanding of tavern and inn signs. In addition to physically stabilizing the signs, conservation has uncovered unsuspected images — hidden under layers of grime and overpaint — which date back nearly two hundred years," explained Dr. Schoelwer. "Painstaking research of newspaper advertisements, tavern licenses, and census records has helped us to identify names of artists or tavern owners uncovered during conservation."

Sandra Webber, Paintings Conservator at WACC, treats the Sign for Stiles’s Inn and Thompson Hotel.

Early in the project, it became apparent that the distinctive features of tavern and inn signs present atypical challenges to conservators. First, each sign is a complex, multi-media art work, including not only a painted surface but also wood joinery and turning, metalworking, and occasionally, low-relief carving. Each sign therefore required attention from not one conservator, but a team of conservators specializing in paint, wood, and metal conservation.

Secondly, inn signs were typically painted more than once during their useful years, updated or spruced up by second or third generation proprietors of an inn. "The result," observed Dr. Schoelwer, "is often a fascinating layering of multiple images. This feature distinguishes sign paintings from easel paintings, in which later work is generally considered an undesirable alteration to the original surface." To make the situation even more complicated, many signs were "restored" during the late 19^th or 20^th century, when sign paintings began to catch the eye of collectors and Americana connoisseurs. In their effort to make the signs look like new, restorers of the Colonial Revival era added yet another layer of paint.

Both sides of the Sign of the Bull’s Head, dated 1760. East Windsor, Connecticut. The image on the left is the sign as it was repainted circa 1910-1920. On the right is the original, 18th-century image, which remains intact on the other side of the sign.

Repainting posed a particular conundrum to curators and conservators. On the one hand, layers of overpaint obscured earlier surfaces. On the other, with the passage of nearly a century, Colonial Revival interpretations of early signs have themselves acquired a certain charm, becoming integral elements of the history of folk art and Americana. Fortunately, thanks to the many techniques available to conservators today, it has been possible to examine underlying images without disturbing subsequent surfaces.

The search for early imagery often mirrored an archeological dig through layers of paint and grime.

A late 18^th-century sign from Moses Blatchly’s Inn in East Guilford (now Madison), Connecticut, provides one of the most dramatic examples of rediscovery. The sign has long been among the most popular in the collection. Its female figure, quaintly labeled, "The Scales of Justis / The Charming Patrones," graces the pages of numerous American history textbooks. When conservators examined the sign, however, they quickly concluded that the painting that had made the sign so appealing to publishers was, in fact, too good to be true. "The garish red, white and blue paint, along with an unusually glossy surface, helped us to determine that the sign had been completely repainted during the 20^th century," explained Sandra L. Webber, Paintings Conservator at WACC. Meanwhile, CHS Curator of Technology Richard C. Malley located an early 20^th-century photograph documenting the Blatchly sign’s pre-restoration appearance.

Webber began conservation work on the Blatchly Inn sign by testing the 20^th century layers of varnish and paint, determining that they could be removed without damage to underlying surfaces. As she worked, the original 1790s image slowly emerged: a much more delicately painted female figure wearing a trailing headdress of leaves and holding the scales of justice. "The quality of the original version, probably executed by a professional sign painter, contrasts sharply with the amateurish 20^th-century overpaint," Webber said.

Sign for Blatchly’s Inn during treatment. On the left is the early 20th century version of the image, on the right is the 18th century original.

Beneath the two hundred-year-old figure of Justice lies yet an earlier image of a sailing ship. Traces of the stern are barely visible to the naked eye, in the form of slightly raised lines showing through from beneath the woman’s skirt. Examining the sign under raking light, WACC conservators made mylar overlay drawings which revealed the hidden image to be a two-masted brig, probably dating to the 1780s.

(conservation continued)