Uncovering boudoir's colors has analysts seeing green

Lenox, Mass. (April 12, 2004) -- Anyone who has ever struggled to find the “just right” paint color should rest assured: New high-tech paint analysis recently undertaken at The Mount has revealed that even design expert Edith Wharton changed her mind sometimes.

Visitors to The Mount, Wharton’s 1902 estate and gardens in Lenox, Mass., last season saw the walls and wood paneling in her restored boudoir painted creamy yellow with green accents, colors believed to be original to the room.

But with nagging questions still remaining, The Mount called in leading historic paint analyst Robert Furhoff of Chicago to do more paint detective work. After four days of work late last summer, he left with a new conclusion: the room was meant to wear two shades of blue-green, trimmed with ivory and cream.

Furhoff used both 21st century technology and 1902 records to piece together the complex paint history of the room. It turns out that Wharton had the boudoir’s walls, wood paneling, cornice and ceiling painted one set of colors when the room was first installed. But a few weeks later, when oil paintings ordered to complete the room arrived in the wrong sizes and the wood paneling had to be re-arranged to fit, she took the opportunity to completely change her color scheme, too.

Ogden Codman, Wharton’s co-author on the landmark 1897 book, The Decoration of Houses, was the interior designer for the boudoir, and it’s believed that the second paint scheme actually represents her overruling of his first choice. Furhoff pieced together the story from his meticulous paint samples, the original set of design drawings from Wharton's time and correspondence from The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) archives.

It will take one more step -- lab testing to check whether fading of the pigments may have occurred -- to nail down the exact hues. Then, aided by a grant from Benjamin Moore & Co., The Mount will repaint the boudoir in Wharton’s intended true colors.