Cornices & Original Paint Colours

[MattW]

Below are some pictures of the cornices & ceiling roses from the georgian town house I am renovating (built 1827). They have been cleaned and are mid way through being restored. One of the pictures shows the yellow walls and a blue grey ceiling colour. These appear to be the first layer of paint on top of the original plaster. Presumably they will have changed significantly over time as they aged - or do people think that this colour scheme might actually be close to how they once were?

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Horizontal elements at bottom of picture above are new replicas moulded from another part of room (original had been destroyed years ago), the section from the corner back along wall is the original plaster work...

 

[yamin]

I don't know about paint authenticity, although those colours look to be pretty much what i've seen in examples. Have to say though, what wonderful plasterwork - what sort of house is this? The doorway looks wide, is it a grand house - it certainly doesn';t look like a modest terrace with that level of detail.....lovely

 

[MattW]

It's a mid-terrace house in Islington, London. The door way that you can see is the interconnecting door between the two rooms on the 1st floor - presumably the drawing room. The original folding doors are still in place. It's on one of larger squares in the area, but Islington was never (at that time) a particularly grand area to live. The original tenants in the area were middle class (lawyers etc) and skilled artisans (large number of clockmakers for some reason).

The plasterwork, before the layers of paint were removed, was completely indistinct from years of whitewash, covered in modern emulsion and at least one layer of gloss in the mix. The vine & grape motiffe on the ceiling was literally just bumps.

I'm just a little surprised that, if it is original, that the colours are so bright - I thought that Georgian colours were normally fairly muted whereas that yellow is pretty vibrant.

 

[Nigel Watts]

The Georgian period was a long one. By 1827 colour schemes, influenced by the Regency style, could be very bold (think John Soane's Museum).

Mine's a bit later (1840). Same blue ceilings, interesting colours in the cornice - a first floor one was blue and salmon pink.

Do you know where Boris had moved to? He used to be two doors away from me. His old house is still on the market. I thought he was off to join Clive Anderson in Highbury Terrace but someone told me he went somewhere else. Last year he was looking at a fairly palatial villa in Alwyne Road, according to the Evening Standard. I wonder if he bought that?

 

[Penners]

Do you know about the Georgian Group? They have a good selection of books: http://www.georgiangroup.org.uk/docs/pub/index.php

You might even want to join.

 

[MattW]

Thank you for that suggestion Penners. I did know about them and have a copy of their The Georgian House, but hadn't realised they had done a pamplet on paint colour. Have ordered that, so will be interesting whether it covers the very end of the period. Been intending to join for a while, so this gives me a good impetus to do so!

 

[Nigel Watts]

Regency Style by Stephen Parissien is a good reference book for the period.

If you are repainting the cornices I recommend you use distemper, not emulsion. It is more authentic and can be washed off again without further clogging the details. Distempers can be coloured with dry pigments. In my main living room I have gone some way to recreating the original fake oak look and have distempered the cornices an ornagey brown colour (I established that the woodwork and cornices were imitation oak and the wallpaper was trompe l'oeil oak panelling - I have recreated this in the decoration of the cornice and the woodwork, but used a dark green damask wallpaper on the walls) . I made the distemper myself using rabbit skin size, whiting, raw sienna and yellow ochre pigments. There's a good supplier of pigments in Bethnal Green called AP Fitzpatrick:

http://www.apfitzpatrick.co.uk/home.htm

They mainly focus on the fine art trade but will supply dry pigments in decent sized quantities at reasonable prices.

Soane famously used a very acid yellow in the first floor drawing room of his house (now museum) in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Its worth a visit if you dont already know it. You can obtain modern copies of this colour. I used it in my hall but am thinking of changing to a plumb colour it as it clashes a bit with my stair carpet. The original would have been trompe l'oeil stone blocks in a honey coloured imitation marble - a seemingly universal way of decorating halls in early 19thC townhouses, an upmarket rendition of which you can seen at John Soane's house.

By 1840, the age of my house, wallpaper seems to have been ubiquitous. I'm not so sure about 1827, but I suspect it would still have been pretty common.

On the outside, if you want authenticity, you should of course avoid the use of white paint on your window frames. An article on my website explains:

http://www.fitzwalter.com/house/colours.htm

 

[JoceAndChris]

What fascinating stuff! Thanks guys, a real pleasure to read and see all this - brillaint website Nigel! I love "String" too and plan to use it on the exterior. (though might confine it to woodwork- bit scared of dark green/ black woodwork though I agree much more authentic than white)

What did you use to strip the cornice Matt? Absolutely beautiful!

There's a lot of very old yellowy-buff here too, a shade or two darker than yours though. Gaskell speaks fondly of the "ancient yellow drawing room" in "Wives and Daughters". I wonder how much of the muted, sludgy way period colours are interpreted by the likes of F & B is down to what we like to imagine historic colours are- rather than the actual truth of how they used colour. I think if we stepped back in time we'd be astonished at some of the brilliant schemes around.

I remain completely gutted that this kind of gorgeous, ornate detail has been ripped out of the grand London terrace where we have a flat. (it's in the hallway though. ) You two are lucky!

 

[Hatster]

Good point, Joce - there was a fascinating exhibition on 'repair and restoration' at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge which showed 'then' and 'now' colours for a lot of paintings and other materials, and the difference between what we're used to and what was originally painted was incredibly striking.

 

[Nigel Watts]

A great book on John Fowler was published not that long ago. He decorated many Geogian houses with a great deal of panache, often using very strong colour. I would certainly recommend the book as a source of ideas. His curtains especially are to die for - the ones at Seizincote are just astonishing, apparently based on an early 19th C design. I am currently working on some, on a rather more modest scale but Regency inspired, in intervals between sorting out my garden following the removal of a very large tree which was causing subsidence.

 

[Penners]

I love "String" too

My great uncle used to save all the string he ever came across.

He had three boxes to keep it in - one labelled "long bits of string", another labelled "short bits of string" and a third labelled "bits of string too small to keep".

True!

 

[Feltwell]

My great uncle used to save all the string he ever came across.

He had three boxes to keep it in - one labelled "long bits of string", another labelled "short bits of string" and a third labelled "bits of string too small to keep".

True!

Was he from Suffolk?? :lol:

You see, all the stories us Norfolk lot were told as children about the funny lot from Suffolk were true after all!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Is that the same great uncle who was also Neville Coghill? What extraordinary relatives, Penners. And what a useful collection. I tend to use hair bands.

By the way, everybody, Penners may be leaving us for two weeks as of Wednesday as he will be moving and won't have an Internet. (I am a nosey person and find things out) There are no words to say how much he will be missed.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

There are no words to say how much he will be missed.

Rather a hollow compliment! :wink:

Good luck with the move Penners - remember not to overdo it, what with your back and all. Ask Mrs P to move the heavy boxes for you.

 

[JoceAndChris]

He'll know what I mean!

Nigel- I'll get that John Fowler book, thanks for the recommendation.

 

[MattW]

What did you use to strip the cornice Matt? Absolutely beautiful!

Joce - I have to confess that I didn't do it myself. It was done by Jason Jewell and his team (http://www.cornicecleaning.com/) using a combination (I believe) of Peelaway to soften the top layers of emulsion, then a low pressure water cleaner and a lot of delicate handcleaning. Have to say if everyone helping me is as passionate, knowledgeable & professional as Jason then this project is going to be a real pleasure to do. Have learnt a huge amount from him about the plasterwork in this type of london, how it was made, types of design and frequency it was painted etc. Matt

 

[JoceAndChris]

Don't blame you at all, Jason Jewell sounds like a diamond geezer - could you share a few of his gems? sorry

How often was it painted?

 

[MattW]

Well a number of things he pointed out to me were...

- over 75% of the layers of paint on my cornice were probably put on in the first 20 years after being built. The coal fires put out a huge amount of soot and hence house proud owners appeared to have the ceilings whitewashed initially every year. But over time the gaps between layers got longer and longer, presumably as they got less picky/the area became less well to do. He thinks the last time they were painted were probably in the 1950s.

- the layers of paint on the room side of hte cornice was much thicker that then wallside - far too much effort to paint with your back hard against the wall, so it was painted far less frequently.

- The ground floor plaster (not in those pics) is decorated with little balls of plaster - they seem almost perfectly spherical. He is still trying to figure out how they were made without silicone moulds.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Brilliant stuff! Isn't it just great when knowledgeable people talk to you - well, I'm happy if anyone talks to me to be honest!

I've often wondered about the real regularity of all this whitewashing that's supposed to have gone on. There seems to have been precious little whitewashing here, probably too busy with the pigs!

But that cornice of ours in London - 1880 - every 5 years it gets another layer of inappropriate Dulux glooped over it. Soon it's going to need Jason Jewell really badly.

They did have moulds didn't they? They must have had spherical moulds.

 

[Nigel Watts]

John Fowler: prince of decorators by Martin Wood, Frances Lincoln, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7112-2711-8, £35

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/071122711X/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link