For the last segment of our Lyman Estate Greenhouses walkthrough series, we’re taking you on a stroll through the camellia house. 🌺 The 1820 room was originally built for growing peach trees, but now houses these beautiful flowers. See our 100-year-old collection of camellias, as well as tropical azaleas, orchids, and more. #MuseumFromHome
View of the Salmon Falls River from Hamilton House, Springtime 2020
In need of a #MuseumMomentofZen this Thursday? Enjoy this video of the view of the Salmon Falls River from Hamilton House. The flowing water, the chirping birds, and the springtime air all come together in this one moment of tranquility.
Today’s #MuseumMomentofZen is perfect for orchid fans! This Lyman Estate Greenhouses video walkthrough takes you through the pondhouse and the lower sales house. These rooms house many varieties of orchids, plus plenty of other flowers types, such as kalanchoes and aeoniums.
Today we have a walkthrough video of two more Lyman Estate Greenhouses’ rooms for you. Here you’ll see the second and third grapehouses, filled with flowering plants such as bougainvillea, billbergia, and bottlebrush. (Plus, a lot more plants that don’t start with the letter “B.”)
Join us on a virtual walkthrough tour of the Lyman Estate Greenhouses’ first grapehouse to celebrate #EarthDay! 🌸🌼🌷🌻 While the greenhouses are closed to the public, we hope seeing the spring blooms emerging in this video tour will brighten your day. Stay tuned for more greenhouse room tours!
Although not a piece that will be included in our upcoming “Artful Stories” exhibition, this chair reupholstery video from our conservation lab was too good to not share!
This is a treatment of a small chair from Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum & Visitor Center. The wool embroidery had some small holes, revealing the cream-colored fabric of the layers beneath it. Fraying fabric is likely to continue to fray. To fix the issue, conservators custom-dyed cotton patches and inserted them in the holes. Then, custom-dyed nylon net was overlaid across the entire chair seat. By stitching through the nylon net and the patches, the patches both improved the overall look of the chair and stabilized the fabric to prevent further fraying.
Come back for more behind the scenes conservation content!
Gilding Swab Cleaning
This spring, our “Artful Stories” art exhibition will open, thanks in large part to the behind the scenes work of our conservators. This week, we're getting a behind the scenes look in the conservation lab at a conservator cleaning a frame.
This video shows the process of cleaning "size" (adhesive used to attach gold leaf to the desired area of the frame). On this frame, the size is rabbit skin glue, common to nineteenth century gilding. Rabbit skin glue dries hard, but is still sensitive to water. On humid days, dust can attach to the glue size and discolor it. The only way to clean the frame is to reactivate the original rabbit skin glue layer with new, dilute rabbit skin glue. A conservator dips a large, soft cotton swab into rabbit skin glue solution made in the lab and rolls the swab over the frame's surface to pick up dust and dirt. It also redeposits a new layer of clean glue.
Tune in next week for another #ArtfulStories update!
Sealing Cracked Gilding
This week for our “Artful Stories” conservation update, we see frame repairs in action. When cracks appear in the surface of gilding, it becomes vulnerable to further damage. The cracked edges leave the gilding materials exposed to the air and humidity, which can cause flaking due to expansion and contraction. Here, a conservator adds a very small amount of consolidant (a.k.a. adhesive) which wicks into the tiny cracks in the gilding to seal them. This process stabilizes the cracks to prevent flaking. The consolidant used in this video is made of—get ready—diluted fish glue and ethanol!
Check back next week for more #ArtfulStories content.
Gilding Spot Testing
This week, for our “Artful Stories” conservation update, we’re taking a closer look at the gilding process. In this video, conservators test a sample of gilding from a gold frame with mineral spirits in a process called spot testing or solubility testing.
Many old frames have had multiple repairs, and it can be difficult to tell what material (i.e. paint, wax, adhesive, plaster, putty, etc.) comprises a repaired portion of the frame. However, identifying the material can help conservators figure out how to safely remove it. Here, a conservator scraped off a small sample of a repaired portion of the frame, placed it in a glass dish, and added a few drops of mineral spirits. The sample was then confirmed to be gold-colored wax because it dissolved in the fluid.
Check back in next week for another look at conservation efforts in preparation for #ArtfulStories.
Painting Removal in Phillips House for "Artful Stories"
An expansive exhibition like our upcoming “Artful Stories: Paintings from Historic New England” takes plenty of behind the scenes work to make it happen. Historic object conservation plays a vital role in preparing artwork for a show, and it all begins with de-installation. Each painting must be safely transported from its usual location to the conservation lab in Haverhill, Mass. Watch conservators in this video carefully remove “A Country Landscape” (Charles Harold Davis, c. 1890-1920) from Phillips House and safely wrap it in packaging for transportation.
In anticipation of our upcoming exhibition “Artful Stories,” we will be sharing different historic conservation methods and treatments across social media. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more exclusive #ArtfulStories conservation updates.
Good morning from the animals at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm! The grounds are open daily from dawn to dusk. Stop by and say hello!
Have you seen the trailer for Little Women Movie? That’s the Lyman Estate where Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet are dancing as Jo and Laurie, about a minute in. We’re thrilled to be one of the Massachusetts locations for the Greta Gerwig-directed adaptation. See it in theaters this Christmas! https://youtu.be/AST2-4db4ic
Historic New England is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation. We preserve and share centuries of New England heritage through historic properties, collections, archives, education programs, and more. 
