The long, narrow kitchen is divided by an old chimney. The stove and food-prep area are on the north end (foreground here), while counters, cabinets, and additional sinks on the other side make serving simple.

This house is in Dunstable, Massachusetts, a hamlet with a still-rural air. Built as a traditional brick-end Federal very early in the 19th century, it grew with a gabled ell extension to the east and several screened porches added early in the 20th century.

By the time Mary and David Dacquino found the house, a side door and windows had been added to the street side, throwing off its classic symmetry. Interior partitions and extra doors divided the stately old house into a warren of spaces. But its colonial simplicity, fireplaces, and early moldings beckoned.

Mary especially liked the kitchen—a long, somewhat curious room extending half the length of the first floor. In the center sits a handsome brick hearth, a reminder, perhaps, of this space having been two rooms during the house’s time as a travelers’ inn. The large kitchen boasted three sinks and 36′ of countertop space, promising plenty of homemade pasta primavera for the couple’s army of nieces and nephews. A separate mudroom entrance at one end protects the house from any incursion by the harsh New England winter.

The promising room needed significant restoration. Ignoring colonial precedent in search of Tuscany, previous owners had faux-finished the walls with a yellow glaze and applied trompe-l’oeil paintings of roosters, pigs, and horses on cupboards and doors. The navy-blue ceramic tile floor was out of character and out of plumb, with tiles cracking. Mary and David began work with the floor; after removing additional layers of asbestos tile, linoleum, and vinyl, they found the underlying wood floorboards unsalvageable. A new floor of wide pine planks was properly laid. Particleboard cabinets were replaced with simple, Shaker-influenced units made in ash by a local cabinetmaker and painted in historic colors.

The south end of the kitchen is centered on a sawbuck dining table milled from lumber salvaged from an old shed on the property. Built-in bookcases, a 10'-long window seat, and the centered hearth make the long room cozy and comfortable.

Countertops now are a practical combination of soapstone and reclaimed 200-year-old chestnut. They kept the old sinks of stainless steel and copper. Mary, an accomplished cook, insisted on a commercial Viking stove. To keep the ventilation from looking too modern, a new soffit with an antique pediment camouflages the vent above. Behind the range, a veneer of antique-style brick integrates with 19th-century English mosaic tiles, which continue above the counters.

Architectural salvage and antiques furnish the room. An 8′-long sawbuck table was custom-made from old barn boards on the property. A mid-19th-century pine worktable with apple green legs became a perfect workstation by the stove. Ironstone and yellow ware; vintage copper pots, pans, and chocolate molds; a rusty bread sign from an old bakery; and café curtains made from mangle cloths create the look and feel of an early New England kitchen.

The mudroom at the north end likewise needed a total makeover. Housed in a two-story ell added by previous homeowners, the addition had a hipped roof that didn’t belong. Mary and David reconfigured it into a larger, more functional addition, making room for a pantry and powder room as well as a 16′ x 8′ mudroom downstairs, and a bedroom and bath upstairs. The back porch now has a flat roof and decorative balustrades milled to match those on the front porch, which ties the addition into the main house.

In the kitchen, an 18th-century English swing-leg table is surrounded by Pennsylvania plank-seat chairs. The crock nearest the center box on the mantel was made by a member of the Van Deusen family.

The Van Deusen House in Hurley, New York, was built in 1723 as a story-and-a-half stone cottage with a kitchen ell. This simple form (not the bell-shaped gambrel we usually dub “Dutch Colonial”) is rooted in medieval Dutch architecture.

The old Hudson Valley house underwent a major renovation in 1909 when three dormers were added, the central staircase was re-configured, and fireplaces that had been bricked over during the 19th century were uncovered. Otherwise, the house has remained more or less as built.

The owners, who are both antiques dealers, were conversant in different types and eras of antiques, but living in the Van Deusen House has heightened their appreciation for furniture, ironwork, fabrics, and crockery made in this area. Piece by piece, they have filled the house with things that fit the mellow old rooms: hooked rugs and quilts made in Hurley, furniture produced for country homes by long-ago area cabinetmakers, local hand-hammered metal. Metalwork has been of particular interest; the house’s first owner and namesake was a blacksmith, and much historic ironwork was original to the house.

In the master bedroom, American Empire furniture shares space with the current owner’s crewel embroidery, 18th-century Austrian ironwork, and an early 19th-century Chinese oxblood flambe vase.

The furnishings in the Van Deusen House are not all from the 18th century (though many are), nor is there a strict geographical criteria for the collection. Well-loved objects came from this very house, or from this town, or China, and from places in between. But the furnishing scheme relates to this house and to the agricultural history of Hurley. The home is furnished with antiques that show us things about the lives of Hudson River Valley farmers across three centuries.

It isn’t surprising that the owners assembled a collection so sensitive to local history. From the moment they moved here, they began to work to heighten appreciation of Hurley’s antiquities; the wife was instrumental, in fact, in starting the Hurley Heritage Society.

The Town’s Turbulent History

This is still a place of cornfields, old stone houses, and rural serenity. Local pride in the Dutch architecture is high; Hurley itself is a National Historic Landmark . The Van Deusen house has played a prominent role.

The most compelling feature of the village is the superb collection of stone houses lining either side of Main Street. They were built starting in 1669, after the first log huts put up by 12 Dutch and Huguenot families in 1661 were burned by the Exopus Indians of the Algonquin Nation. By then the territory was English, and Nieuw Dorp (New Village) was renamed Hurley, after Governor Francis Lovelace’s ancestral home in England.

During the American Revolution, the English burned Kingston, New York’s colonial capital. Hurley became a refuge for Kingston residents, and for one month in 1777, the state’s capital. The Senate chamber was the Van Deusen House dining room (reportedly because its living room was too cold). The house was also a hiding place for state papers, and a prison for the noted Tory Cadwallader Colden.

Around 1797, Isabelle Hardenberg was born a slave in another of Hurley’s stone houses. She became famous as the abolitionist and evangelist Sojourner Truth; rumors persist claiming the town was on the Underground Railroad.

In the Taliaferro-Cole garden, straight brick paths link buildings. (All photos: Courtesy Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

At the center of the Colonial Revival Greenhow-Repiton garden, a spiral topiary centers a circle around which lawns and beds radiate.

Underlying the designs is knowledge of the town’s history; excavation has determined where outbuildings, wells, walkways, and property walls once were located. Some maps of the 1700s survive, as do letters and inventories. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s first landscape architect, the Olmsted-trained Arthur A. Shurcliff, studied many surviving sites to document plant use in the South.

“It is a credit to the conservative English taste of Williamsburg’s gardeners that this small Virginia town had some of the best examples of Anglo–Dutch gardens in the colonies,” write Brinkley and Chappell in their classic book, The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg.

“The colonists tended to create the gardens they remembered, or their parents remembered, in the England of William and Mary. Consequently, these styles persisted longer in America . . . than in England.”

Crushed oyster shells cover paths between boxwood-bordered parterres in the Benjamin Waller garden.

Still, most Williamsburg gardens probably included vegetable gardens and scattered flowering plants, with a small orchard of fruit trees if space allowed. Walkways were generally laid out in direct lines between house, outbuildings, and work areas. Decoration (such as vases and garden seats) and water fountains were rare. Fences, however, were required after 1705, to protect gardens from livestock. Garden walks might be surfaced with brick, gravel, or crushed shells.

As the Foundation’s web site puts it, “Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area is a compromise between historical authenticity and common sense, between brutal realism and gentle ambience.” Just like the restorations private homeowners undertake.

A time-worn hasp and a slide bolt with an ornate backplate on a cupboard accent an early 19th-century Creole house in New Orleans.

Before the invention of the cylinder lock, household security was a matter of trusting one’s neighbors—or pulling in the latch string. While many of the mechanisms that pinned doors together, made them operable, and held them fast against unwanted intruders in colonial times are still familiar, the many hardware innovations of the 19th century were yet to come. Even the lowly doorknob didn’t become widespread until after 1840.

The standard means of securing a door before that date was the thumb latch. Most original latches have at least four parts: pull, thumb latch, latch bar, and catch. The thumb latch (a rounded, shallow bowl just the shape of the opposable digit) is attached to a handle with a curving tail that slips through a hole in the door. When the thumb latch is depressed, it lifts the latch bar. The thumb latch is kept in position on the outside of the door by the pull: a curved handle with flattened cusps in the shape of a bean, heart, arrowhead, or other motif at either end.

On the inside of the door, the latch bar is held in place by a catch. Sometimes there is also a simple rounded piece of metal called a staple that helps keep the latch bar within a limited range of motion. Plain thumb latches work best when the door is flush with the surrounding frame, but there are also offset latches for doors not hung flush with the surrounding casing. The only way to lock a colonial thumb latch was with a bar pin, which slides into a hole in the door just above the latch bar.

Contemporary entrance sets may not work quite the same way, but they can include authentic pulls and thumb latches with cusp detailing, combined with either a cylinder deadbolt or a mortise lock. (And while the thumb latch no longer lifts a latch bar, it can still open the door.) Many entry sets that include a cylinder deadbolt are designed for pre-bored doors. Mortise sets, which can be built to specifics that include door thickness, door swing, backset, and left or right “handing,” are most appropriate for existing or original doors.

Staghorn rat-tail hinges are a fanciful yet authentic choice for kitchen cabinetry from Timeless Kitchen Design.

Another latching device common in early America was the slide bolt, often beautifully crafted with tapering handles that ended in a ball shape. A tensioning “leaf” on the back of the bolt held it in place either horizontally or vertically. For Dutch doors, sextant-shaped quadrants held the two halves of the door in alignment, yet allowed for quick separation of the top half—an ingenious idea that still makes sense, especially if you have a barn on your property.

Obviously, there was no such thing as a “pre-hung” door three centuries ago. Instead of the now ubiquitous precision–machined butt hinge, colonial doors were hung with hinges that visually demonstrated strength: the pin-style H and H-L hinges, and the horizontal strap hinge of medieval origin.

Strap hinges usually taper toward the end, finishing with a flourish in the form of a ball-and-spear, bean, or heart motif cusp. In modern settings, strap hinges are usually decorative: they make a great statement on an entry door and have become increasingly popular for garage doors, where monumental sizes (up to 48” from some makers) give them great presence.

A close-up view of a staghorn rat-tail hinge, from Fisher Forge.

The colorfully named, self-descriptive rat-tail and butterfly hinges popular in early America also offer great decorative potential. Even though these functional fasteners were far from common—after all, colonial homes had precious few cabinets—such period hinges are still excellent choices for cabinetry today. The same goes for pulls based on latch styles that were used almost exclusively for doors: Suffolk, Norfolk, and the like.

Brass hardware was reserved for fine bench-made furniture. Designs expressly followed the prevailing style: ornate Queen Anne bail pulls, beaded Sheraton knobs, bas relief Hepplewhite pulls with stylized centerpiece motifs (pineapple, ship’s anchor). The same designs are still available today for reproduction furniture. Look for pulls or drops that avoid the trademarks of machine-made hardware, such as obvious seams, a too-consistent “antiqued” finish, and a total lack of wear or patina. The best drops and pulls are direct copies of period examples made using the centuries-old lost-wax casting method.

Teardrop-shaped door knockers in wrought iron have been made since colonial times; this one is from Acorn Manufacturing.

Some of the most beautiful forms of early hardware are the many types of door knockers crafted in wrought iron and brass. Shapes in iron include rings (with or without escutcheons, or back plates), colonial “S” knockers, and teardrop shapes. Brass door knockers often feature a favorite colonial motif: eagle, pineapple, shell, a crest, or a leaping dolphin.

Thanks to a succession of revivals ever since, many of these styles are still available to grace the door of your Colonial, whether it was built in 1760, 1920, or just a few years ago.

Crown Point Cabinetry used a custom-blended milk paint for these Shaker-inspired cabinets.

Before the 1870s, ready-made paint was unknown. Each batch had to be compounded by hand from three basic components: dry pigment, a liquid vehicle to carry it, and a binder to hold the mixture together. Milk paint’s popularity was due in part to its inexpensive ingredient list of natural earth pigments, slaked lime, and a milk protein called casein. Milk paint is the original “organic” paint.

Real milk paint continues to be made from all-natural ingredients, making it a popular choice for those concerned about toxic substances in the home and the environment. It’s popular for other reasons as well. In appearance, it’s unlike any other paint on the market. The finish is flat, yet has subtle differences in shading that mimic the patina of age.

Chris Harter’s museum-quality pieces feature milk paint in classic colonial colors with hand-rubbed and distressed finishes.

Milk paint also lends itself well to different effects, like that achieved by the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company’s Antique Crackle, a natural gelatin-based product. When brushed over milk paint, it results in an alligatored appearance that suggests great age. Milk paint also can be burnished—that is, some of the top color sanded away—to reveal the wood beneath. If two colors are applied, then burnishing allows the undercoat to show through for a pleasing layered effect.

Milk paint is usually offered in history-based palettes. The Colonial Williamsburg Buttermilk Paints from Old Village Paint Colors, for example, derive their colors from the collections of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virginia. Milk paint palettes are, like those in colonial America, deep and rich, derived from natural deposits in the earth, primarily oxide-containing clays: ochre yellows, umbers, siennas.

A common misconception about milk paint is that the palette is limited to these intense shades. In fact, there is great flexibility in the color range. Milk paint comes in dry powder form, which means the painter has total control over the outcome. Depending on how much water is added, the final effect can range from a translucent wiping stain to a soft color wash to a solid color. In addition, pigment powders can be mixed to create custom shades. The Real Milk Paint Company’s web site features a handy chart of 1870s color mixing formulas, ensuring you have the authentic recipe for creating that elusive green-bronze or claret.

Walls at the 1835 Wylie House in Bloomington, Indiana, are finished in milk paint donated by the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Company.

Other great features of milk paint: The color doesn’t fade over time, nor does it chip or peel, because it is absorbed into porous surfaces. It does, however, stain easily. Most companies recommend that it be sealed in high-traffic areas, and thus offer complementary lines of sealants. The Homestead House Paint Company carries a line of all-natural hemp oil, beeswax, or varnish finishing products.

In the distant past, homeowners added linseed oil or tar derivatives to strengthen milk paint’s durability for outdoor use. Today’s needs are more varied, and milk paint companies have responded. Most carry an additive product that will allow paint to adhere to non-porous surfaces. For stubborn surfaces like tile or laminates, there are acrylic bonding primers. More recently, self-priming paints have hit the market, making milk paint a possibility for outdoor and furniture projects.

Painting wainscots, trim, and freestanding furniture in milk paint helps tie elements in a reproduction home together, giving it an authentic early American feel.

If you’re intrigued by the charm and character of milk paint but haven’t the inclination to mix your own paints, simulated milk paint is another alternative. Sold as a liquid, these paints usually contain a synthetic paint extender.

In addition to its line of 18 historical colors, Olde Century Colors has a crackle medium and an antiquing liquid. General Finishes offers a line of acrylic “milk paints” for use on furniture; combined with the brand’s glaze effects, these paints produce decorative finishes prized by furniture-makers and craftspeople.

Final proof that milk paint has become the new “it” paint is Anna Sova Luxury Organics’ line of milk paints, which are marketed as containing “90% food ingredients,” and have luscious names like Raspberry Custard and Currant Jam.

The portrait is of Eunice Denny Burr Hedge.

The historic town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, has much to offer beyond its Pilgrim heritage. Plymouth flourished as a shipping and manufacturing center in the 18th and 19th centuries; that prosperity left a glorious array of structures.

One exquisite Federal house here is now a museum owned by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society. Hedge House was built in 1809 for a local merchant named William Hammatt. Thomas Hedge took ownership in 1830, and commissioned a three-story ell. The interior of the house recently has been restored.

Hedge House came close to demolition in 1918, when the last family member in residence passed away. The town of Plymouth purchased it, intending to build Memorial Hall on the site. But a group of local women saved the building and moved it in 1924 to its current location facing the waterfront. While the exterior had been maintained over the decades, the interior had not; decades of white paint, it seemed, had obliterated any traces of the house’s Federal grandeur.

The Society’s executive director, Donna Curtin, began work in 2002 with a search for evidence, which she hoped would guide the re-creation of original interiors. Luck was with her as two of the original wallpapers were discovered.

With wallpapers in the entry hall and best parlor determined, Curtin set about selecting appropriate floor coverings for the rooms. As a historical design consultant, I helped her choose two archival patterns dating from the early 19th century, and the carpets were then woven in England.

With its octagonal walls and grand center staircase, the entry hall features a skillful reproduction of a block-printed paper simulating marble ashlar blocks, a distinctive motif of the period. The pattern was revealed as a negative on the original plaster of the walls; that image, along with reference to what we know of the era’s colors, permitted the reproduction. A non-directionally patterned carpet, augmented with a border (at the time, the height of luxury) was laid to conform to the space.

In the best parlor, carpeting (by J.R. Burrows) laid wall to wall

is a documented Regency pattern from the early decades of the 19th century.

In the best parlor, wallpaper was reproduced from an existing document, and once again, we fitted an authentic carpet with a complementary archival pattern. In this room, Curtin worked to acknowledge the various decades of the family’s residency—rather than confining furnishings to a specific decade. Most notably, the Rococo Revival gasolier, painstakingly restored by local artisan and historian David Berman, embellishes the space with an unusual verdigris finish. Marking the decoration’s evolution is a concept that continued throughout the home. In the family parlor, Federal, Empire, and Victorian furnishings happily coexist.

Antique dimity bed-hangings have been restored to the four-poster bed, a family piece still in the house.

Upstairs, the north bedchamber contains a spectacular canopied bed and other family furnishings, including a slant-front desk with oxbow drawers. Nearby, a late-19th-century bathroom has been carefully preserved; it may appear Spartan, but it was luxurious in its time. Further work on the house will include interpretation of another bedroom to its appearance in the middle of the 20th century.

Dan Cooper is not only a regular contributor to this magazine, but also a supplier of wonderful period textiles. Learn more at cooperscottagelace.com.

Resources: Wallcoverings & Wallpaper | Fabrics & Trimmings

Treenware plates, bowls, and a pitcher or two coordinate peacefully with other wood items on a cupboard with aged milk paint.

Treen is made of wood and tole is made of metal, but both forms flourished as a means of artistic expression in 18th- and 19th-century America. Treen, the older of the two, was the standard tableware in Europe when the first colonists began to arrive in the early 1600s. Even at that early date, most treen was lathe-turned. Early Americans may have found themselves copying Native American techniques, literally carving dishware out of pieces of felled trees and smoothing individual platters and trenchers with a drawknife.

Early treenware can be either carved or lathe- turned—or some combination of the two, as an unusual example in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village demonstrates. Made from an ash burl (a type of large tree blister that lends itself to a bowl shape in the hands of an expert carver), the simplest parts of this bowl were turned on a lathe, while the pouring lip and three handles (one is a V-shaped spout) were carved, smoothed with a drawknife, and shaved. Other early pieces include all sorts of spoons and ladles, nut crackers, needle holders, rolling pins, and butter presses and scrapers.

At some point—possibly about the time of the “fancy” painted furniture rage of the early 1800s—it became fashionable to coat the exterior of treenware with milk paint. In authentic pieces, the working part of the treen is often severely scarred from food preparation; the outside of the bowl or plate displays an appealing distressed quality. Collectors typically display the backside of the bowl to capture the visual impact of ancient wood peeking though wisps of aged paint. Signs of use and wear and age—patina, even warping—are also highly desirable.

A hand-hewn bowl by Burl Treen in burl ash; the open handles were inspired by a historical piece.

Short of clear provenance, it can be all but impossible to estimate the true age of a piece of treenware, although evidence of first-growth wood is a good indicator. Even fine antiques are rarely signed; most vintage treenware on the market probably dates to the mid-19th or early 20th centuries. Prices range from less than $20 (for pieces of recent age) to $500 or more.

Reproductions and modern craft interpretations of treenware abound, so if your purpose is purely decorative, these are worth considering. Inexpensive reproductions in resin ($25 or less) are usually made from castings of very old pieces. Contemporary reproductions in wood tend to be more costly, because they are handmade by skilled craftspeople who are rightly considered artists, like Shaari Horowitz and Michael Combs.

Toleware is nearly as hard to identify and place as treenware. Decorated tinplate caught on in Europe in the first half of the 18th century, and the first pieces to arrive here were imported, as were the thinly milled, tin-plated sheets themselves. About 1750, Edward Pattison began making tinplate wares in his shop near Hartford, Connecticut. Toleware manufacture blossomed after the Revolutionary War in family workshops in Connecticut, Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania. The men worked the tin and peddled it from town to town, while their wives and daughters “flowered” the finished pieces with paint. Prominent makers include the Stevens and Buckley shops near Portland, Maine; the Boynton Shop in Massachusetts; the North Shop in Otsego County, New York; and the Butler Shop in Green County, New York.

A shelf full of early Pennsylvania toleware includes a rare piece with crystallization. right, top: An early-20th-century tin pan with tole decoration, from Hidden Treasures.

Decorators copied designs found on imported ceramics of the period, but there’s nothing quite like the blooming florals in red, ochre, and yellow on the black and green grounds of American toleware. Regional variations were felt most strongly in 19th-century Pennsylvania, where handmade pieces continued into the 1870s.

They include brilliant red backgrounds and crystallization, created by applying muriatic acid to an unpainted surface. Pennsylvania artisans used a great deal of “thumb work”—a technique in which paint colors are applied and blended with a finger or thumb. Favorite motifs include large ochre shapes with black work; circles on thinly painted white; and white blanks filled with flowers and fruit.

In New Hampshire and later Massachusetts, John Boynton made tinware decorated with stenciling rather than free-hand painting. While stenciling may sound simple, in one of his highly sophisticated pieces multiple colors are washed over metallic powders stenciled onto asphaltum. Because the ground softened easily, many layers were necessary to create the design.

Toleware forms suggest fancy display and storage. Typical pieces include trays, cheese cradles (in a distinctively curved shape to hold a circular cheese), teapots and caddies, breadboxes, and document boxes. Early toleware should show evidence of hand manufacture and hand painting or stenciling. Expect to pay $100 to $1,000 or more for an authentic 19th-century piece in good condition. While 20th-century reproductions from around the world are legion (think Mexico, China, and Taiwan), many pieces from the 1920s to 1940s exhibit the same painting techniques, compositions, and color combinations as the earlier forms. They’re priced well, too: $50 or less in many instances.

Click here to view all early American furniture in the Products and Services Directory.