Technical Analysis of Historic Wallpapers at Colonial Williamsburg
 
Colonial Williamsburg’s (CW) wallpaper fragments collection has been the subject of an ongoing analytical study to identify the materials and methods used to create these composite architectural finishes. Catalogued within CW’s Architectural Fragments collection, most wallpapers span from 18th – mid- 19th century and include papers discovered in Williamsburg’s buildings during their restoration almost a century ago and those collected from other sites. Scientific analysis of the papers, including their pigments, adhesives, flocking fibers and even paper fiber content has provided us with the first comprehensive survey of wallpapers made and used in the early Republic. Cross-section microscopy and polarized light microscopy were fundamental techniques for study of these materials, complemented by FTIR, XRF, and SEM-EDS. In this lecture, Kirsten Moffitt will discuss the techniques of wallpaper analysis at CW and highlight case studies that led to a better and more nuanced understanding of CW’s wallpaper collection and the history of wallpaper technology.  

Presenter:
Kirsten Moffitt is Conservator & Materials Analyst for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She holds an M. S. from the Winterthur University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, where she specialized in the preservation and analysis of painted finishes. She has a special research interest in historic architectural paints and has published and lectured widely on the subject, and in 2013, her work helped inform Benjamin Moore’s Williamsburg paint line. In addition to leading various professional and in-house paint workshops, Kirsten teaches polarizing light microscopy for pigment identification to graduate students in the Winterthur conservation program. She co-organized the 2017 International Architectural Paint Research Conference and co-edited the conference publication (Archetype Publications) which included her paper “Limewashed Island: Architectural Finish in Early Bermuda”. Her current research projects include the use of orpiment in housepaint, which she will discuss in the next issue of Traditional Paint News and at this summer’s Microscopy and Microanalysis 2021 virtual meeting.

Registration is free for this event.