The Saga of Seal and Polar Bear, Part I

One of the things I enjoy most about being a curatorial fellow here at Shelburne Museum is the time I spend exploring the collections. I get to rummage through shelves and bins in search of delightful objects, and I’m always amazed by the things I stumble across.

Take, for instance, my adventure with Seal and Polar Bear.

Last summer I delved into our painting and print storage areas looking for pieces to feature in my exhibition How Extraordinary! Travel, Novelty, and Time in the Permanent Collection. The show opens on June 16^th, and it explores the concept of novelty in 18th and 19th-century European and American art. Here are just a few pieces that will be featured:

Currier and Ives, Old Neptune, 1860

Vue d’optique of the interior of the church of St. Genevieve, Paris, 18^th century

Albertus del Orient Browere, Rip Van Winkle in the Mountains, ca. 1880

While the objects above might suggest that I just choose pieces at random, I actually follow several criteria when I’m putting together my shows. I see an exhibition as a narrative, and any piece I use has to help tell the story I want to convey. I also pay attention to an object’s condition.

What I really like doing, though, is finding the Museum’s hidden gems, those great-looking, but lesser known pieces that haven’t been shown in a really long time, if ever. Also, the weirder the work is, the better.

Imagine my delight then, when I stumbled across this….

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite paintings in the entire collection. This is Seal and Polar Bear, painted by Charles Sidney Raleigh around 1881.

I was immediately taken with the work, beginning with its abstract character. I really liked how Raleigh had simplified his forms, allowing me to focus on the action. His use of color also intrigued me, particularly in the ice and sky, where you’ll find traces of pink, green, and blue.

Fine, you might be thinking, but let’s get to the point: this painting is basically a cartoonish rendition of a polar bear killing a seal. It’s full of teeth, claws, and blood. It’s violent, exaggerated, and downright weird.

It’s my kind of painting, in other words.

I had found a really striking piece for my show, but now my real work began. I knew virtually nothing about the work or the artist, so I needed to do some research. I also needed to talk with our conservators to determine the painting’s condition and decide whether it needed any treatment. Then there was the matter of choosing its actual placement within the exhibition. My work was definitely cut out for me, but I was ready for the adventure.

Stay tuned for Part II, when I begin to share the results of my research.

Replicating the Work of a Bygone Era: Part 2

I set out to make a new four-foot wide louvered elliptical attic vent for the Variety building, I thought I would have a technological advantage over the original builder, and would have a relatively easy time of it. The original was white pine; I thought redwood would be a more weatherproof material (and we have lots of redwood scrap in the shop from helping Randy repair the Museum's redwood picnic tables). To get the two curved pieces that form the the ellipse I needed a board over seven inches wide, and we didn't have one. Chip had some leftover Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), a.k.a Atlantic white cypress, that was wide enough, and equally weatherproof, so I made the frame from that.

I used the big bandsaw to cut the curves, and a stationary belt sander to smooth them. I copied the mortise-and-tenon joinery from the original, but didn't risk splitting the wood by drilling holes and pegging the delicate joints...I used West System epoxy glue instead. I didn't have a board wide enough to make the bottom rail in one piece. Instead I made a separate piece for the center hub and glued it on with a curved caul (clamping block).

You can see the dados (slots) to hold the louvers. Before gluing up the new frame I taped the old and new pieces together and traced the location of the dados; I copied the angles with a bevel gauge. To cut them I used a fine-toothed handsaw (I prefer the Japanese style that cuts on the pull stroke), and a narrow chisel fashioned from a sharpened screwdriver. There is no easy way to do this with power tools. There are 81 of these dados on the vent, but working by hand was the only way to do it accurately.

The louvers were a real challenge: the dados on the center hub were angled about 12 degrees from the face, while the dados on the elliptical frame were angled 45 degrees. This meant the louvers had 33 degrees of twist. In order to twist the new redwood louvers I soaked them in water overnight and then cooked them in a microwave oven on "high" for 5 minutes. Thanks to Mirsad for this idea! Whenever you bend wood it is a good idea to bend it farther than you need, because it will spring back a bit as it dries. I made a bending form with one row of slots at 90 degrees and another at 45, this held the microwaved louvers at 45 degrees of twist until they dried. It is unlikely that the original builder had a microwave oven, but I think he could have done this with steam, or by using green wood.

It took a day and a half to fit the 40 louvers into the frame. Each one had to have different angles cut on each end, and each one was a different length and taper. I used a block plane to make the ends thin enough to fit snugly in the dados, and used a knife and a plane to taper the louvers flush to (in line with) the frame. Instead of nails I gave each dado a shot of epoxy to hold the louvers in place.

To make the trim strips that went around the ends of the louvers, I got some western red cedar (Thuja plicata) and Chip's Stanley 45 combination plane, with interchangeable cutters that can produce any shape you need. I needed to make two curved beads, one about twice as wide and tall as the other, but right next to each other.

I had to bend these strips to the curvature of the ellipse and the center hub, but they were too long to fit in the microwave. I built a steam chamber by attaching the wallpaper steamer from the Conservation Lab to a length of PVC pipe. After an hour of this, the shop smelled like a sauna, and the wood was pliable enough to bend around a curved form.

I produced a lot of kindling doing this, since the red cedar heartwood wouldn't quite bend far enough without snapping. The sapwood proved to be more flexible. The trim for the center hub was a different matter entirely. I couldn't get the trim stock to bend to such a tight curve no matter how much steaming, soaking, and microwaving; the asymetric double-bead profile made the wood twist every time.

The solution was presented by the original trim pieces, which the carpenter had kerfed (notched) every half-inch to facilitate bending. I did this to a piece of square stock, then soaked and microwaved it. To bend it, I screwed blocks of wood to the ends of a long band clamp, and wedged the trim stock between them. As it bent, the band clamp helped distribute the strain along the wood and prevented it from snapping. Thanks to Chip for this design!

It took a lot of clamps to attach the trim to the vent until the glued dried. Then it was time to shape the center hub trim.

The Stanley 45 was too big to make the turn, so I took the cutters out of it and made a "scratch plane" that I could steer more easily.

The trim pieces moved a lot as I was clamping them, so I made them longer than they needed to be and cut them to length once the glue had set. To avoid gluing the trim where I planned to cut it, I put clear packaging tape on the frame and glued the trim to that. Once it was cut to length, the excess trim could be removed by pulling off the tape. I fashioned the radial pattern on the center hub from redwood scraps, whittling them with a knife and smoothing the lines with a block plane. These got glued on as well.

Once everything had been glued, shaped, and sanded I submerged the whole unit in a trough of Flood oil and let it soak for an hour. This was less toxic than the original "finish" of creosote and lead paint, and really brought out the color in the cedar and redwood. I stapled brass screen on the back of the vent, and used the Genie lift to install it on the building.

It is easy to overlook the amount of time and skill required to produce many “architectural details” on old buildings. In this case, a mere attic vent took the better part of three weeks to replicate. While the original builders may have been faster since they weren’t trying to make an exact copy of someone else’s work, they probably did not have power saws, wallpaper steamers, epoxy glue and microwave ovens. While these tools certainly made parts of the job easier and faster, there was no modern substitute for the really important aspects of making delicate pieces of wood fit together well. The bulk of the work was done with saw, chisel, and plane; patience, a steady hand and a true eye—the same way it was done by the carpenter long ago.

Replicating the Work of a Bygone Era: Part 1

How did we go from this:

To this?

One of the challenges faced by the Museum carpenters is repairing the many old buildings here, and deciding when to replace, rather than repair something. Sometimes all we have to do is replicate how something was done 150 or more years ago, other times we can better preserve our buildings if we intentionally depart from the original construction. Either way requires careful study of the original to see how it was made, what made it last, and/or what made it fail. The attic vent from the Variety Unit was already severely weathered when squirrels tore through it. There was enough left of the old vent (an elliptical wooden fan) to see how it was made, but there was too much gone or worn out to repair it. I'd be practically rebuilding it, so I set out to make a replacement by copying the appearance of the old one while adding a few improvements. Here's what I learned about the old vent; in Part 2 I'll show you how I made the new one. (A note on scale: this thing is four feet wide, and 20 inches tall).

Right away I could see a few interesting details: the old vent had big square wrought nails driven through its joints as reinforcement. These were very rusty, and had clearly been in there a long time. The elliptical frame was assembled in halves, with a spline connecting them at the top of the arc. This meant that near the bottom of the arc the grain of the wood cut across the frame at a steep angle to the tenons that held it into the horizontal member--this was prone to splitting. It is easy to imagine that the frame split as it was being assembled, and rather than start over the builder just nailed it back together.

I could also see where the frame had split around the pegs that held the two halves of the ellipse to the top spline: the splits left dark marks where the spline was exposed to the weather. There were wrought nails all through this joint as well.

That spline was spiked to the center post, which filled the gap between the two topmost louvers. This meant that it was a three-dimensional wedge, wide at the top and beveled parallel to the louvers, yet thin enough at the bottom to fit between the louvers on the center hub. I think the spline was made from a separate piece because to be strongest its grain needed to be horizontal, yet had it been carved from the same stock used to make the center post the grain would have been vertical, and weak.

Despite the vintage fasteners used in its construction, the vent was attached to the building with round finish nails. Moreover, the white pine of the vent was much more deeply weathered than the surrounding clapboards and trim. This indicated that although this part of the building was built in the late 1940s, the vent was much older. Close inspection of the vent revealed why it was worth salvaging and re-using: all of its 59 separate pieces had been painstakingly cut and shaped by hand, and were held together by multiple tiny cut nails. The marks of a scratch awl (used to make layout marks instead of a pencil) were still visible, as were the marks of a very thin sawblade and a sharp knife.

Being hand cut, the elliptical frame was not a regular geometric shape, so each louver had been custom-fitted, with a slightly different length, width, and taper. To make things even more interesting, each louver was slightly twisted (maybe they were steam-bent, or perhaps the builder used green wood?). The louvers were set in narrow dados (slots) in the frame and held in by small nails and a curved trim strip that went all the way around the frame. There was another of these trim strips on the center hub, and in order to bend it to such a tight curve it had been kerfed (cut partway through with a saw) every half-inch, and each segment had a small nail in it.

The detail on the center hub looked like relief carving from the ground, but it turned out to be made up of thin diamond-shaped slivers that were also nailed on. There were only two left, but I could see the marks left by the others where the hub hadn't been worn down so much by the weather. Each of these was slightly different as well, suggesting they had simply been whittled to shape. Somebody with a lot of patience spent a long time making this thing!

Teaching Shelburne Museum



Last week I found myself  brandishing a tape measure and scale to study ceramic plates from a hundred year-old shipwreck laid out on the carpeted floor of Pleissner Gallery. This engaging, hands-on workshop was part of an ongoing partnership between Shelburne Museum and Turning Points in American History, a professional development program for Vermont educators that supports teaching in the social studies and seeks to build strong school-museum relationships.

Turning Points educators examine a ceramic plate from a canal boat "shipwreck" to review historical methods



At last week's Primary Source Study Group, Turning Points Co-Director Scott McLaughlin staged an early twentieth-century Lake Champlain canal boat wreck for a lesson in historical methods. He drew a cross section of the boat as it was found in the lake on a swath of fabric and unfurled it on the gallery floor. He then laid out artifacts that archaeologists have found in different parts of the boat, including a coin, a pipe, and a handcrafted doll. The ceramic plates that we used as primary sources were similar to artifacts that archaeologists have found in such wrecks. Primary Source Study Group participants collected data including the plates' condition, function, size, and weight, and then analyzed, synthesized, and interpreted these findings in order to date and contextualize the ceramics. By the end of the workshop, we were able to make conjectures about the family that lived on this particular canal boat based on our detailed study of the "material culture" they left behind.

Archaeologist's perspective drawing of the Sloop Island canal boat shipwreck (Adam Kane, 2004)

As a young museum professional interested in how to use art and artifacts to teach history, I have been tagging along with Turning Points study groups during their Shelburne Museum visits. I will write again soon to share the innovative ways that Primary Source Study Group participants are using what they learn at the Museum to teach with primary sources in the classroom. Hint: it involves less textbook readings and more staged shipwrecks.

My How They've Grown!

The Geranium seedlings are already 4 weeks old, and my how they've grown!

At almost 2 inches tall, they could actually produce a flower!

For the next 12 weeks until the planting season, I will be starting many more seedlings this very same way.

Stay tuned, it won't be long before we're transplanting them in our greenhouse!

Make Your Own Greatest Circus Poster on Earth

As I spent last week working in the Circus Building writing new cards for our Dive In With Webby program, which contain fun and interactive activities for visiting families of the museum, my eyes couldn’t stop from floating over to the circus posters.

During the Golden Age of the Circus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the enormous traveling companies relied heavily upon poster distribution to announce their upcoming arrival to towns across America and Europe. While trusty locomotives hauled the 100 plus rail cars of resting animals, actors, equipment and wagons; a team of men were sent ahead to plaster the upcoming town with circus posters. It was common for a town to get covered with 5,000 to 8,000 posters!

Shelburne Museum’s large collection of posters is loaded with colorful images of great feats of daring, dangerous animals from remote parts of the world, and unbelievable sideshow characters. The sensational writing is another big selling point, as even I find myself pining to see “Goliath the Monster Sea Elephant: The Greatest Sea Monster Ever Exhibited Alive” (27.4-236), or “The Human Projectile Hugo Zacchini: A Living Person Shot Through Space with Violent Velocity from the Mouth of a Monster Cannon” (27.4-251).



Not only are these posters fun to see, they’re also fun and very easy to make! Where will your imagination take you?

To complete this activity you will need:


A Piece of Paper (8.5x11 is a fine size, but don’t be afraid to make a big poster)
Colored Pencils
Markers
Pencil
Eraser
Stencils (Optional)





The seven stencils, several of which were traced from toys made by the Holtztiger company, are spread onto two pages. Click on either page to open it in a new web browser. You might need to edit the settings on your printer to ensure a successful print.

Directions
1. Print out the stencils and cut them out (optional).
2. Map out your poster using the pencil, eraser, and the optional stencils. Ask yourself, “If I owned a circus what part of my show would be irresistible to see?” Draw lightly so you can erase if you need to.
3. Still using your pencil and eraser, write a title for your poster as well as the name for your circus.
4. Using your markers or colored pencils, fill the poster with as much color as you possibly can!

Want to really get people’s attention? Create your own circus stencils using found objects from around the house. Find other materials to decorate your poster with – like glitter, paints, macaroni, etc.

Feel free to check out these photos of the circus poster I made to help you get started. Tune in next month for another fun art project, and don’t forget to check out the Circus Building or our Dive in with Webby program when the museum opens for the season on May 13th!

Winter Seed Starting

Winter seed starting for me is truly something to look forward to. I look at it as a reward after designing and ordering seeds for all the new gardens in our upcoming season.

I have just sown petunia and geranium seeds which I germinate under lights in my office. Stay tuned, as it won't be long before they're up and growing!