James Madison’s Montpelier

Not Just Paper and Glue

When was the last time you tackled a home improvement project? Painting seems quick and easy. Why, you could paint every room in the house on Saturday morning and have time for flag football and grilling in the afternoon.

Then you actually dig into the project. Moving furniture, taping doorframes, laying drop cloths, and dusting. The project could be hours old before the brush even touches the wall. A whole house in one morning, flag football and grilling in the afternoon? You’ll be lucky to finish three rooms in time for Sunday’s 4:00 p.m. NFL kickoff and takeout.

The lesson: home improvement takes time. The Dining Room wallpaper installer, Patrick Shields, arrived at Montpelier last week. We expect the whole process to take approximately ten days. Patrick will hang the wallpaper almost the same way an installer would have during the Madisons’ time.

Anyone who has worked on their own walls knows it’s much easier to paint than wallpaper. But as complicated as wallpapering is now, it took even more time and skill two centuries ago. Continue Reading…

It’s FINALLY Here!

Have you ever had to wait for a package? The excitement starts when you order the latest and greatest widget– the iPhone 4 for example. You rush home from school or work each day just hoping it’s on your doorstep. Finally, there is a brown box on the doorstep waiting just for you. You scoop the precious cargo off the steps and muscle your way through the front door, leaving a disaster in your wake. Keys, unopened mail, the newspaper, your coat, and briefcase or purse are scattered in a haphazard trail from the door to the living room while you scrounge for scissors to liberate your treasure from its cardboard dungeon. Retail therapy, indeed.

That urgent sense of waiting for an important package has captivated the Montpelier staff recently. By now, you have probably read all about our curatorial team’s efforts to carefully choose the most appropriate wallpaper for the Madisons’ Dining Room. Curators spent months consulting leading historic wallpaper experts and examining period samples that were known to exist during the time the Madisons would have originally purchased their wallpaper.

Courtesy Adelphi Paper Hangings, LLC

Once the curatorial team settled on a pattern, they placed the order with Adelphi Paper Hangings, which specializes in historic reproduction wallpaper. Fulfillment of the order was anything but simple. The technicians at Adelphi used carved wooden blocks to hand-stamp the paper layer by layer, to create the finished product you can see in our previous posts. Continue Reading…

What’s on the Wall III

You have read our initial wallpaper post, the comments on Facebook, and our answers to your questions. Now the moment of truth: what paper did our team of researchers and experts choose for the Dining Room?

Before we tell you, we want to provide some context for the choice. Remember that, as we mentioned in the last post on this topic, tastes in interior décor were different in the early 19th century. Period aesthetics showed a preference for strong colors, often combined in way foreign to twenty-first-century eyes. Patterns were popular, and there was little hesitation in using a different design for the carpet, wallpaper, curtains, and upholstery in the same room.

We know that when President Madison died in 1836 there were 36 engravings on the Dining Room walls. Today we would be loathe to hang so many prints on a highly patterned wallpaper. Not so in the early nineteenth century. Our team of experts believe that showing that aesthetic is important in creating the visual feel of this period room. They chose the circa 1815 paper with the green and buff pattern imitating draped fabric and originally made by the Philadelphia firm of Virchaux.

Another factor in the paper’s selection was its French-inspired design. The many ads for “Paper Hangings” in the National Intelligencer reveal that the local market followed the period predilection for fashionable French wallpaper patterns. Drapery papers frequently appear in the ads. Among the most popular papers available in the Washington region were those imported from France or produced by Philadelphia paper makers adapting French designs. A number of these paper makers were French émigrés like Henri Virchaux. Continue Reading…

What’s that on the wall? II

The response to our last post on the wallpaper was tremendous– particularly from our Facebook fans! We are thrilled that you are all so interested and involved in the “Presidential Detective Story!” Readers asked a lot of good questions, and we hope to address them with this post.

Many people said they like the yellow wallpaper displayed in the Madisons’ Dining Room. This paper is French or American, circa 1800-1810. Of the three papers on the wall, it seems to be the most modern. Some of you commented that the yellow paper would match Dolley’s china. Although the reproductions of James and Dolley’s Nast china are yellow tinted, the original pieces are more of a salmon color, as you can see in the photograph of the Nast tureen which Montpelier owns.

Peter Meyerhof asked, “Since a speck of original scarlet wallpaper was found in the drawing room, why isn’t there a sample with a red background being considered here?” This is a great question. We know the Madisons liked red and used it in several rooms in their house, however, it is unlikely they used it in every room.  During the Madisons’ time in the President’s  House they used several different color schemes throughout the house.  We also have other fragments of Madison-era wallpapers that were found in a rats’ nest at Montpelier. Both fragments are multicolored, but not large enough to see a pattern. These are small clues, but they lead us to believe the Montpelier interiors were decorated in a variety of colors.  If we chose red for both the Drawing and Dining Rooms – the two major public rooms in the house–we could overuse that color. Continue Reading…

What’s that on the wall?

If you come to Montpelier today and take a house tour, you might be surprised when you enter the Dining Room. Strips of reproduction woodblock wallpaper hang on the Dining Room walls. Each has a very busy pattern. Some of the patterns are accompanied by the border papers frequently seen in early-19th-century wallpapers. So what’s going on?

We couldn’t find any evidence of paint or white wash on the walls. This means the Dining Room, like the Drawing Room, was probably papered. Visitor accounts tell us Dolley Madison served a variety of sumptuous meals there. They also say the Dining and Drawing Room walls boasted a variety of art. Incredibly, none of these accounts tells us anything about the walls under the art!
Continue Reading…

Coming Down the Line

On the winding roads of Route 20 in Orange County, Virginia stands a century-old train depot, home to the local Montpelier Station, Virginia post office. On February 21, 2010, it became the home of James Madison’s Montpelier’s newest exhibit— The Montpelier Train Depot: In the Time of Segregation.

More than 200 people attended the February 21 opening. Emmy-award-winning journalist Juan Williams addressed the crowd. “This is a place of power…this is a place of life.…This is a place of teaching. This is a place of healing. This is a place of understanding. This is a place that can help us in terms of imagination…help understand what took place here… in terms of how we see each other across racial lines,” said Williams.

Workers laid the first tracks for the railroad line that runs past the Depot circa 1880. This was a time when trains were the fastest way to get anywhere, for both freight and passengers. In 1910, William duPont, owner of Montpelier, built the Depot to upgrade passenger and freight service. The Depot was constructed using plans from Southern Railway, with two waiting rooms – one for “white” passengers and one for “colored” passengers. Segregation was required by Virginia law. Continue Reading…

A Tale of Two Tales

In addition to reading the the Madisons’ personal correspondence, Montpelier’s documentary researchers read memoirs and reminiscences written by contemporaries and Madison family members. There are two particularly interesting sources which survive for the life of Dolley Madison, written by members of her family. Dolley’s niece, Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, wrote a set of memoirs of the life of her famous aunt, to whom she had been very close, titled Memoir I and Memoir II. In turn, Mary’s niece Lucia adapted those memoirs into a compact and readable book titled Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison.

Lucia presented a romantic ideal of Dolley Madison by changing names, dates and the text of actual letters. Although Mary’s admiration of Dolley is apparent from her Memoirs, Lucia changed actual scenes of Dolley’s life and those changes are reflected in her editing of Mary’s Memoirs and her own published work. Together, these works and their creators make an interesting puzzle for documentary researchers at Montpelier. Continue Reading…

Christmas at Montpelier

Today when we think of Christmas, we think of Christmas trees in houses and town squares, carolers in the snow, and houses decorated with lights and bows. The season of Christmas is a visual feast everywhere you look. At this time of year, visitors often ask our guides how Montpelier would have looked during the Christmas season two centuries ago. The answer is a bit surprising.

Christmas, both the day and the season, was celebrated differently in the Madisons’ time. Many of the Christmas customs we know today did not become popular until the end of the 19th century or beginning of the 20th; other Christmas traditions were introduced when the Madisons were in retirement. Santa Claus comes from German and Dutch traditions, and St. Nick made his first appearance on a wider stage in America in Washington Irving’s History of New York, published in 1809. The first record we have of a Christmas tree in Virginia isn’t until 1842, in a house in Williamsburg. What, then, was Christmas like for the Madisons?

Christmas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a time for visiting family and friends, hosting or attending large parties, balls, and dinners. In early December 1834, Dolley wrote to her niece Mary with news about what the family members at Montpelier were doing: “Anna & her sisters have gone to a dancing part at Newman’s – they are to keep the Christmas from this time to New Years day.” [note: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, December 11, 1834, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.] Little more than a year later, a friend writing from Richmond told Dolley that everyone there was still “feasting, dancing & making merry,” despite the cholera epidemic in the city.¹ Continue Reading…

Provenance

After our last update, we were asked: what is “curatorial research” and how do Montpelier’s researchers go about figuring out whether an object belonged to the Madisons or not. Curatorial research can be very involved, but let’s start with “provenance” and continue from there over the next few posts.

So what exactly is provenance? You may have heard the term if you have visited a museum, watched “Antiques Roadshow” or “History Detectives”, or collect antiques. A good definition for “provenance” is, “a history of who owned an object”. As you can imagine, at Montpelier, we are very interested in objects that were previously owned by James and Dolley Madison; one way to describe these pieces is to say that they had “Madison provenance”.

Figuring out an object’s history often starts with finding out how the current owner acquired it. From there, many times we can work backwards from one owner to the next – and, if we are lucky, we may be able to trace the piece all the way back to James and Dolley Madison. For some objects, we are able to easily determine provenance because others have already documented it or a clear chain of ownership exists. For other pieces there are gaps in the chain of ownership. Our goal then becomes filling in the gaps. Continue Reading…