Making a House a Home: Furnishing the Conner House
Author: Helen M. Psarakis, Former Conner Prairie Curator
Recreating the interior of an historic house may be likened to solving a mystery. Sometimes the evidence reveals conclusions "proved beyond a reasonable doubt." At other times the answers are less forthcoming or are never revealed. In most cases solutions are only determined after a combination of extensive research and consultation is applied by the sleuth.
Conner Prairie's goal in furnishing the Conner House was to accurately recreate the physical surroundings of the Conner family when they lived in their home from 1823 to 1837. Unfortunately, the material world of William Conner is particularly elusive. We know much about his life, businesses, and family, yet so little about his physical surroundings. As a result, we were forced to look beyond the specifics of Conner's life and study the world around him. Consequently, the interior furnishings of the Conner House are based upon a study of what was available, what was considered fashionable, and what might have been important or necessary to a man of William Conner's social and economic status.
Deciding upon which period a house will be interpreted is one of the first steps in furnishing a restoration. A committee of Conner Prairie staff members from the collections, education, and research departments determined that the Conner House should be restored to the years 1823-1829. Selecting this earlier time period enables Conner Prairie to educate its visitors about the history of central Indiana leading up to the establishment of the recreated 1836 village "Prairietown."
The written strategy for furnishing an historic structure is called a furnishings plan. Typically, furnishings plans are compilations or summaries of research reports and the documentation of decisions made based upon those reports. The questions asked when furnishing an historic house range from broad ones such as determining the taste of the person one is attempting to portray, to more specific inquiries about which room and what style of bed the children slept in. In an effort to answer some of these questions, research for the Conner House re-restoration included further documentation of William Conner's life, the examination of original artifacts in other museum collections, and a study of nineteenth-century probate inventories from Hamilton County, Ind. Additionally, secondary source research was devoted to specific aspects of the plan such as furniture, carpeting, ceramics, and room arrangements.
In addition to the museum's staff and volunteer research efforts, Conner Prairie commissioned four studies from consultants as part of the re-restoration: "The William Conner House Preliminary Restoration Study" by George Skarmeas of Vitetta Group/Studio Four; "Excavations at the William Conner House: A 19th Century Rural Residence in Hamilton County, Indiana" by William Huser, Jr. and Rob Mann of Archaeological Resources Management Service, Ball State University; "William Conner House...A Comparative Microscopical Paint and Color Analysis" by Frank S. Welsh; and "An Interpretation and Furnishings Plan for the William Conner House at Conner Prairie" by Gail Caskey Winkler of LCA Associates. All of these studies provided a wealth of information for the museum staff to draw upon in determining the original appearance of the Conner House.
For instance, the architectural report noted that some features of the house such as the fireplace mantles--except those in the kitchen and north chamber--are original. The paint analysis determined what colors the mantels were originally painted. The archaeological report revealed the kinds of ceramic sherds found at the site. The interpretation and furnishings plan report complemented the previous reports by suggesting in which rooms the original pieces may have been kept.
Conner Prairie's registrar coordinated research on ceramics conducted by volunteers. The team began by examining the 26,571 archaeological specimens recovered from the excavation. Through extensive research, they were able to identify specific types and patterns of ceramics common to the early nineteenth century and probably used at the Conner House. The ceramics selected for the Conner House matched specific sherds or are representative examples of sherds that could not be more fully identified. Unfortunately even the most technical aspects of restoration work have their limitations. While results from the microscopic paint analysis reveal that the hall and all rooms but the kitchen were wallpapered, the remnants of these early papers were entirely removed and discarded during Eli Lilly's 1934 restoration. No physical evidence remained to tell us what was there and no firsthand accounts have surfaced which describe the actual wallpaper. In an effort to prevent such a dilemma from recurring in the future, Conner Prairie elected to follow Frank Welsh's recommendation to "preserve later paint layering in selected areas [of each room] to facilitate future scholarly research." Leaving relatively untouched original material will enable future restoration projects to evaluate our present re-restoration and re-affirm or draw new conclusions based upon surviving documentation.
One of the most exciting changes made in the Conner House was the new interpretation of multiple-purpose room use in the early nineteenth century. The museum initiated these changes based upon the recommendations set forth in consultant Gail Winkler's report. The former parlor has been converted into a parlor/best bedroom, reflecting a common seventeenth and eighteenth-century practice. This tradition was disappearing in cities by the time the Conner House was built, but continued in rural areas well into the nineteenth century. Also changing is the former dining room, which has been designated a sitting/dining room where the family gathered for meals and relaxation. This room would also have served as William Conner's office, and is furnished to reflect this function.
New research findings led to additional changes in other parts of the house. Unlike today, upstairs and downstairs halls were not exclusively used as entryways and passages during the early nineteenth century. They were also furnished as living/work spaces where light chores such as sewing could be undertaken. The upstairs bed chambers are more sparsely furnished than previously, and one of these rooms has taken on the second role as a store room.
Conner Prairie recreated the original paint colors of the woodwork in the Conner House based on Welsh's microscopic paint analysis. The white painted trim in the parlor/best bedroom, halls, and upstairs bed chambers is very typical of the nineteenth century. The gray painted surfaces in the halls, particularly on the baseboards, served a utilitarian purpose by hiding dirt and scuff marks. One of the most exciting and readily apparent changes in the Conner House is the use of graining on some of the woodwork. Graining, a popular nineteenth-century painting technique that imitates the look of expensive wood, was found in the parlor/best bedroom and the sitting/dining room. The graining in the Conner House was recreated by a decorative painter, John Kraus, based upon the pattern of the original graining.
As mentioned previously, there were no surviving fragments or descriptions of the original wallpaper. The wall coverings of the Conner House are reproductions of nineteenth-century American, English, and French wallpapers. The papers are all printed in their document colors. Document colors are the colors of the original wallpaper or "document." Today wallpaper manufacturing firms usually make adjustments for any fading and printing errors which may have occurred to the original sample before reproducing them. The wallpapers selected for the Conner House employ floral motifs, striped patterns, and medallions, all popular styles in the 1820s. The hall wallpaper is known as an "Ashlar" paper, made to imitate quarry-cut blocks of marble. Ashlar patterns were fashionable for nineteenth-century stair halls, as their patterns could be easily repaired without having the appearance of being patched. Conner Prairie commissioned the reproduction hall wallpaper for this restoration from the original document in the collection of The Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
The use of floor coverings in the Conner House re-restoration is a study in scholarly conjecture and a concession to modern safety and preservation concerns. The hall and stairs showed no evidence of having been carpeted, but for the safety of our visitors and the protection of original architectural features, it was decided to cover them with a woven, list-like carpet made with a linen warp and a wool cloth weft. According to Gail Winkler, the parlor/best bedroom was the only room likely to have been carpeted during the Conners' occupancy. Tack marks were found in the floor boards of this room, but they did not indicate when it was first carpeted, or what style of carpeting was installed. Conner Prairie elected to reproduce a Venetian carpet copied from a surviving fragment in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village. Venetian carpeting is a flat woven, reversible, multi-colored, striped carpeting. The carpet is woven in strips which are sewn together to fit the room. Textile assistants in the collections department coordinated the planning, weaving, and installation of the Venetian carpeting. The reproduction carpet installed in the parlor matches the original in color, pattern, and size as closely as possible.
Furnishing the Conner House proved to be an ambitious undertaking for the Collections Department. Although the museum's collecting period extends to 1860, the focus of its research and collecting has concentrated on the 1830s. (The Conner House was formerly furnished to the 1830s, and our recreated village Prairietown always portrays the year 1836.) The decision to furnish the house to the 1820s provided both new opportunities for research and an expansion of the scope of Conner Prairie's collection.
The curatorial staff created room-by-room lists of artifacts needed for the new furnishings plan. Some of the needs were filled using pieces already in the museum's collection. However, many of the artifacts placed in the Conner House were acquired specifically for this re-restoration project. The curatorial staff went on short trips through Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio in an effort to ferret out furnishings appropriate for the 1820s. They also went on one extensive (and exhausting!) two week research and acquisition trip to the east coast. The journey covered four thousand miles from Indiana to Maine and south to Virginia. It included research visits to five museums and stops at more than 100 antique shops.
One of the most fruitful and rewarding parts of this trip was the opportunity to study original sets of bed hangings in preparation for constructing our own set of reproduction bed hangings for the parlor/best bedroom of the Conner House. Research was conducted in the collections of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Old Sturbridge Village, Stenton Mansion, Winterthur and Colonial Williamsburg. Observations on construction methods such as types of seams, application of tape edging, and the lack of consideration in matching pattern repeats were recorded through notes, sketches, photographs, and video tape. Unlike the Venetian carpeting, the design and specifications for the Conner House bed hangings were based upon data gathered from several different sets of original bed hangings, rather than exact copies of one particular set.
The selection of the bed to be draped by those bed hangings is a telling example of the furnishing process. One of the most frustrating aspects of museum work can be the lack of concrete answers to a myriad of questions. When no conclusive proof can be found, curators and historians must weigh many factors before making a decision. For instance, it was known that the bed chosen for the parlor/best bedroom was made between 1810 and 1820, and it was stylish and well-made, but not the most expensive or fashionable bed turned out during that period. It could not be determined with certainty that William Conner would have chosen this particular style of furniture. However, based on the evidence of surviving Conner family furniture, it is known that the Conners were well aware of fashion trends. Additionally, Conner had the assets to purchase high quality furniture, albeit not necessarily the most fashionable or expensive items. Therefore, it can be argued that Conner may well have chosen a similar bedstead for his home.
The Conner House re-restoration was similar to those of other museums in that the "new" appearance of the house was the result of a combination of concrete historical evidence and educated conjecture based upon a foundation of scholarly research. The interior furnishings of the house will undoubtedly continue to evolve based upon future research discoveries. While these changes may not be as striking as those undertaken because of this project, they will, nevertheless, further our understanding and perceptions of what everyday life may have been like for one family of Indiana settlers.