Well into the 19th century, only the wainscot and trimwork were painted in many American homes. This early-19th-century interior has been treated to a palette of earth tones from Olde Century Colors, whose shades include Olde Mustard and a brown called Savannah Red.

Consider for a moment that many colonial householders were lucky to have plaster walls at all. Then thank your stars and garters that today, paints and palettes that replicate or simulate early colors are widely available for different authentic effects.

Well into the late 1700s, most of the colors that went into paint in America were imported here from England as blocks of pigment, which were then mixed with a binding medium like linseed oil. Since both pigments and binders were scarce and expensive, especially in rural locales, paint was applied sparingly: on door and window surrounds, or wainscots (sometimes only as dots or commas of color, as they are most famously at the Peter Wentz farmstead in Pennsylvania). Traveling painters sought out and ground colors from such alternative sources as local earth pigments, plants like indigo, and even dried animal blood.

For a binder, many of these itinerant painters and householders turned to something produced on site: buttermilk. Mixed with the available pigments, milk paint produced a palette of crayon-soft colors in shades from warm to cool: pale pink, ochre, dark red, red browns, cane yellows, and occasionally a copper green. All were country approximations of the high-fashion colors imported to the wealthy in cities: Prussian blue, red lead, vermilion, and verdigris.

Only in the early 19th century, as paint became more widely available, did white become the signature color of the Greek Revival.

The old kitchen fireplace is in the original building, now an ell behind the brick manse.

Since its original section was built ca. 1800, owners have cherished this house in the center of Oak Hill, New York, a small town in Greene County. The property was part of the Maitland Patent, land granted by George III in 1767. In 1794, it was conveyed as Lot 34 to blacksmith Levi Austin Jr., builder of the original house. Brothers Lewis and Philo Hickok added the ca. 1832 brick manse that faces the street today, incorporating the vernacular structure as an ell.

In 1846 they sold the property to Alfred Tripp, whose descendants lived here until 1958. It is still known as the Tripp House. Then, in 1996, Nick and Mary Lou Nahas bought the house, appreciating its Federal façade and Greek Revival elements. They also bought the Victorian-era general store next door.

“There are no other brick houses in Oak Hill,” says Mary Lou. “The house was in a remarkable state of preservation. After the Tripp family left in the late 1950s, it continued to have owners determined to preserve its architectural and historical importance, owners that included New York mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, the president of MOMA, and [financier and old-house aficionado] Richard Jenrette.”

Mary Lou’s son, Christopher Gordon, is a designer who provided invaluable help when she began to furnish the interior.

“He helped me carefully scrape a single layer of paint from old moldings,” his mother recalls. “Chris is always a completely honest advisor, even if I don’t really want to hear what he tells me. He helped us match colors and find furnishings.”

The brick house boasts a traditional floor plan wherein two large rooms, the most formal in the house, open from a central stair hall. The earlier back-house section contains Levi Austin’s main room, which functions as the kitchen. “We call it the keeping room,” Mary Lou says. “We put modern stuff like the dishwasher and refrigerator into one of the pantries.”

The Federal facade probably dates to 1832; the building next door is the 1888 rebuilding of the general store that is part of the property.

Different types of grain painting are found throughout the house, including door and window trim painted to resemble marble. Nick and Mary Lou made the front hall’s black and cream-colored, diamond-checked floorcloth. The lady of the house made all of the curtains.

“I don’t attempt to hang them across the moldings, as they would have originally hung,” she explains. “The swags in the downstairs parlor are from a pattern provided by Jane Nylander in a workshop I took years ago. The dining room has no curtains; we use shutters for privacy and to keep out or let in light.”

An ideal home for her favorite things, the house is filled with hooked rugs, early quilts and coverlets, primitive house paintings, and lace curtains hung on string. A carpet made by Family Heirloom Weavers runs up the stairs; Adelphi wallpaper borders distinguish two of the bedrooms. Period and reproduction furniture was carefully chosen to suit the scale as well as the age of the rooms.

“We have a wonderful opportunity to learn about the 18th and early-19th century,” says Nick Nahas—a research scientist who has become Oak Hill’s town historian.

As early as 1815, a document referenced a store next door. Although an 1888 store building stands there today, records indicate an unbroken history of home-with-next-door-store. When the Nahases bought the place, they continued the tradition: on weekends they sell antiques and collectibles from the store’s original interior, displaying dishes and textiles on the shelves and counters without anachronism.

“I love the house, love the town, and I have always loved to play house and play store,” laughs Mary Lou.

A Federal mantel at a ca. 1815 Palladian house in Louisville, Kentucky, features a sunburst centerpiece and graceful tapering pilasters. (Photo: Franklin & Esther Schmidt)

The pleasures of the hearth are both ancient and varied. Yet in colonial America, the fireplace was valued more for function than aesthetics—a fact reflected in its utilitarian appearance. Set flush with the wall, brick or stone chimneys featured tall, wide firebox openings without much of anything that resembles a modern-day mantel. The openings were huge—so large, in fact, that today we call them “walk-in” fireplaces.

The surrounding wall might be exposed stone or plaster, or, more commonly, plain vertical board paneling. Paneling acted as insulation, and often concealed storage cupboards or a “winder” staircase that led to an upper story. The fireplace surround was equally unfussy, composed of brick or fieldstone. So too was the hearth, the area directly in front of the fireplace. Imported tile was an occasional substitute for local stone or brick.

The delicate garlands on a mantel in an 1803 Federal-style house were inspired by the English Adam style. (Photo: Gridley+Graves)

Although the size of these fireplaces suggest massive log fires or spit-roasted oxen, they were customarily used to house several smaller fires. This allowed one to, say, boil a kettle hung from a lugpole, or simmer a stew in a pot set on a trivet. Bake ovens were built into the back of the firebox or, in later dwellings, to one side. Mantel shelves were largely absent from these first dwellings, but on occasion a narrow, unadorned one has survived, evidence perhaps that even the most harried colonial housewife yearned to display a handful of wildflowers.

These no-frills fireplaces were built right through the 1700s, but with the arrival of the Georgian style by mid-century, wealthier households were installing wide boards with a more polished-looking chamfer edge. They were laid within a rail and stile framework that lent a dignity to the paneling. Rich, wealth-proclaiming paint colors added to the formal effect. There was often a decorative flourish in the shape of an imposing overmantel—a rectangular molded panel that mirrored the dimensions of the firebox opening, often topped with a broken pediment. Despite such elaboration, the mantel was still in essence part of a paneled wall rather than a stand-alone feature.

For much of the 18th century, most fireplaces lacked mantels; instead, the entire wall might be decorated with raised paneling. (Photo: Sandy Agrafiotis)

After the Revolution, the more restrained Federal style gained prominence, releasing walls from somber floor-to-ceiling paneling, and the heavy overmantel fell from popularity. The mantel became the undisputed centerpiece of the main living space. Inspired by the designs of English architect Robert Adam, ornament now was light, delicate, and neoclassical. In fact, the structure of the mantel itself was evocative of a temple, with slender vertical columns or pilasters supporting a horizontal entablature. Composed of the mantel shelf and, beneath it, a wide frieze, this entablature was the perfect ground for ornamentation—motifs such as cornucopia, urns, swags and garlands, lyres, classical deities, sunbursts, and stars. Painted wood continued to be the favored material for mantels, though marble was also in use.

By the 1830s the Greek Revival, or National, style had edged ahead of Federal design, particularly in the American South. Although the two styles had much in common, Greek Revival was more masculine in feel, with a pared-down, post-and-lintel construction. Ornament tended to be more assertive—think of the (now-familiar) Greek key design. Delicate colonnettes gave way to boxier columns and pilasters. Marble was the mantelpiece material of choice, white more so than black. Wood faux-painted to resemble marble was a respectable and less costly alternative. Large mirrors or paintings were hung above the mantel.

This Federal-era country-house mantel in an 1803 Maryland house has a simple dentiled entablature. (Photo: Gridley+Graves)

Colonial Revival homes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries borrowed enthusiastically from all of these precedents for mantelpiece design, though with more of a mix-and-match credo in than in earlier eras. If you are in the market for a reproduction mantel or reproduction fireplace, sources abound, from vintage originals from architectural antiques dealers to reproductions that capture the essence of a particular period. Depending on the era of your house, you may want a purist approach, or something that reflects a combination of styles from early American mantelpieces.

Sources

• American Period Design (508) 384-2562, americanperioddesign.com Faithful recreations of late 18th- and early 19th-century mantels • Architectural Antiquities (207) 326-4938, archantiquities.com Original period mantels • Architectural Components (413) 367-9441, architecturalcomponentsinc.com Museum quality architectural millwork • Benners Woodworking (513) 932-9159, bennerswoodworking.com Custom cabinetry, mantels • Cumberland Woodcraft (800) 367-1884, cumberlandwoodcraft.com Reproduction mantels in wood • Decorator’s Supply Co. (800) 792-2093, decoratorssupply.com Reproductions in colonial and Colonial Revival styles • Design the Space (866)983-3267, designthespace.com Reproduction marble composition mantels, all styles • Fires of Tradition (519) 770-0063, firesoftradition.com Wood and cast stone mantels in period styles • Hull Historical Millwork (817) 332-1495, hullhistorical.com Custom period millwork

• Kennebec Co. (207) 443-2131, kennebeccompany.com Custom cabinetry, including period mantels • Maple Grove Restorations (860) 742-5432, maple-grove.com Raised-panel walls and period fireplace surrounds • Mantels of Yesteryear (888) 292-2080, mantelsofyesteryear.com Replicas of antique mantels • Maurer & Shepherd Joyners (860) 633-2383, msjoyners.com 18th-century paneling and millwork, including mantels and overmantels • Napoleon Fireplaces (800) 461-5581, napoleonfireplaces.com Period-inspired mantels in cast stone, hand-carved wood • Wassmer Studios (800) 923-4234, wassmerstudios.com Mantels and overmantels in cast stone • Wilson & McCracken (800) 783 1772, wilsonandmccracken.com Period architectural woodwork, any style • Wohners (201) 568-7307, wohners.com Period-inspired and custom mantels in cast stone and wood

The best parlor has a 17th-century Dutch gateleg table. The leather chair is 17th-century English or Spanish, and the tall chair is Colonial Revival. The 18th-century press bed has bed-hangings made by the homeowner.

The Stephen Bryant house, a 17th-century Saltbox, is in the Historic District of Plympton, Massachusetts, which, during the 1600s, was part of Plymouth (where the Pilgrims landed). This area became known as Plympton in 1707. We believe that our house is in the oldest village in the country with all its original dwellings still standing.

Stephen Bryant sold his house in 1703 to Dr. Caleb Loring, the town’s first physician. His son, Thomas Loring, served as a captain during the Revolutionary War. Then, in the mid-1800s, the house was owned by a Charles Wright, who served in the Civil War and was shot seven times—and survived!

My husband, Bob, and I bought the Bryant House in 1991, from a California couple in the process of making it contemporary. They had already painted the ancient paneled fireplace wall and were planning a deck with sliding doors. We got here just in time!

I remember driving by this house when I was a child. I had to save it. Bob and I previously lived in an 1840 Greek Revival house that we restored. When we moved here, I was asked to join the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and I’ve been on the Board ever since.

This isn’t a museum: We use everything. Our beagle and a black lab have the run of the house. We’re always asked if the house is haunted: no. But Bob is a direct descendant of William Brewster, who arrived in Plymouth aboard the Mayflower in 1620. As for me, I was born in the wrong century—should’ve been 1646 instead of 1946. This house was meant for us, and we love living here.

The Stephen Bryant House is a classic two-story, five bay Saltbox of 1703. The small original house dates to the late 1600's.

Like many early dwellings, the house is dark, but it faces south, and by springtime sun streams through the old windows. June is its best season, when our herb garden, planted with 17th- and 18th-century varieties, is beautiful, and the early-19th-century lilacs bloom.

The 18th-century press bed has bed hangings made by the homeowner.

Making the Bed

For a while we had an antique bed in our room, but it was from the wrong time period for the house. We decided to commission a replica 17th-century bed, working from a photograph in a book about early furniture.

The bed was made by Rob Tarule, a master joiner and former Curator of Mechanick Arts at Plimoth Plantation. He is in Vermont these days, producing 16th- and 17th-century pieces, using the same materials, methods, and tools that were used for the originals. We waited seven months for the bed, but the wait was so worthwhile.