Turberg produced
a report that became
the template for the
restoration. It included
evidence of two
colors that he called
“Venetian red” and
“Venetian green.” The
former was used for
the primary paint, and
the latter was used for
the elaborate, decora-tive
hand-stenciled
floral pattern.
“There was an area
under the stairway
where the stencil pat-tern
had been saved,”
he says. “I looked at
that and matched the
colors.”
Turberg also pro-vided
cultural evidence
by including the back-ground
Travis
Gilbert, the 23-year-old manager
of the Latimer House, says the circa
1855 iron fence outside the historic
building is also being restored.
for the color and pattern choices.
“His report quoted a man named Andrew
Jackson Downing, the landscape architect
who designed the National Mall,” Gilbert
says. “He wrote a book in 1850 called ‘The
Architecture of Country Houses, includ-ing
Designs for Cottages, Farmhouses and
Villas.’ It really speaks about how, in this era,
wealthy families were taking grand tours of
Europe and they were learning about exca-vations
of villas where they were uncover-ing
painted frescoes in homes. That’s what
they were trying to replicate here with the
vines and the flowers. That report really
speaks about that, along with the tangible
evidence of the samples.”
The evidence gave the society confidence
that the Latimer House would now be his-torically
accurate — which helped offset
reservations that the original color might not
be aesthetically pleasing to the modern eye.
“Tastes change. Fashions change,” Gilbert
says. “You want it to look like it did in 1852.
It’s hard to divorce yourself enough from
the project, to be content with a color that
24
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might not be your
first choice. But it was
Zebulon Latimer’s first
choice. They really
wanted to play on
nature. Everything
was dark and natural
colors.”
There was a time
when recreating the
original color would
have involved trial and
error, especially for a
reddish-brown hue.
“In the past, it was
difficult getting the
maroon colors right,”
Turberg says. “You’d be
adding a tint, adding a
tint. If you didn’t have
enough it looks barn
red. Too much, and
it’s brown. It could be
very tedious.”
Modern technology, including lasers,
identifies and creates the original colors
precisely. That made the painting of the
Latimer House walls fairly straightforward.
The stenciling, though, proved to be more
challenging.
Local historian Robert Warren had discov-ered
a photo of the pattern in the society’s
archives that showed a repeated pattern of
flowers surrounded by a leafy vine.
“It showed a border around the ceiling,
wreaths in the middle of it,” Gansor says. “It’s
like a wallpaper repeat. It repeats endlessly.”
Gansor took the photograph, scanned
it and created a stencil. He then began the
work of recreating it on the walls, complet-ing
the painstaking project in April.
“I am tickled to death they have hired me
to do this job,” he says. “I love to do it, but
after a while your shoulder starts to throb.
You look at the wall and see how big it is,
and look at the stencil and see how small it
is. But it’s really going to be spectacular.”
And just as important for the venerable
house, historically accurate.
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