Curatorial Restoration Process

The Curatorial department is responsible for supplying the mansion restoration team with current historical background materials, such as primary source documentation that assist in understanding architectural changes, and ultimately, furnishing and interpreting the c1820s Madisons' home.

A furniture plan is being developed based on inventories, diaries, journal entries, memoirs, probate records, tax records, and ''family tradition'' (oral history). One room, The Madison's Dining Room, has been reproduced as an exhibit to give visitors a feel for the spaces at Montpelier and to better understand how Curators learn more about the Madisons.

Montpelier gratefully acknowledges the special support of those who have given or loaned objects to Montpelier - and those whose financial support enables us to purchase, conserve, and exhibit new pieces.

Individuals who might be interested in loaning or donating an object or monetary gifts to the Montpelier collection should contact the Curator by using our contact form, by selecting "Curatorial" for the 'Contact Department' field.

Re-Creating Montpelier's Historic Interiors

Research and detective work form the keystone of restorations whether they involve bricks, wood, nails, and mortar or wallpaper, curtains, chairs, and paintings. The recreation of furnished rooms requires as much time to gather evidence and as much attention to detail as the restoration of the structure of a house, an outbuilding kitchen, or a slave quarter.

Recreating historic interiors falls under a discipline called material culture. This study uses artifacts — material objects — as well as documents, visual records, and oral accounts to understand culture — the social milieu of a particular time and place. Ideally, scholars who recreate interiors from the past represent the individual taste of the occupants as well as seeing in the objects they owned and displayed bigger historical themes.

Piecing together what a room looks like at a certain period requires the assembly of lots of clues of different sorts.

Physical Clues

The building itself can provide unparalleled evidence. For instance, a fragment of wallpaper might survive behind a door or window molding. Layers of paint yield the knowledge of color schemes. Sometimes original items are trapped behind the walls during later remodelings. Holes in a window surround can reveal where curtains, shades, or blinds once hung and, in the reverse, the absence of holes can indicate that the homeowner preferred no window coverings in a certain room. Rats, an almost universal co-habitant in early American homes, might drag away fragments of curtains or clothing or other objects to be found centuries later in their nests behind the walls. These clues are invaluable for they are tied directly to the building and its occupants.

Documentary Clues

Recreating historic interiors calls for the careful study of a huge variety of documents – estate inventories (lists of goods which people owned at the time of their death), newspaper accounts, merchant invoices, store records, ship manifests, diary and journal entries, letters from visitors, and sale catalogs from the dispersal of households, just to name a few – really any and everything that tells us what an individual might have accumulated during his or her lifetime. Sometimes documents merely list the type of belonging and sometimes they might describe an object in more detail. They can indicate where the homeowner purchased goods and what they were willing to spend. Others might describe a room, its color scheme, or the placement of objects. Documents can tell us about favorite possessions, why they were treasured, and how they were used.

Clues from Objects

A few historic sites have the good fortune to contain the furnishings of their former occupants, but that is very rare. Therefore, the search for objects that once filled the house becomes extremely important. Original belongings are wonderful in their own right for what could be more accurate. They also provide a wealth of clues to the taste of the occupants, for example: did they prefer old fashioned or modern items; did their taste change over time; did they furnish their house in one principal campaign or did they continue to acquire possessions throughout their lifetimes; did they choose furnishings made of certain woods or in certain styles; did they buy goods locally or import them from farther afield? Archaeological finds offer site-specific evidence of ceramics, glass, and sometimes metal objects. All these clues are invaluable when a historic sites needs to fill in original possessions with other similar objects.

Genealogical Clues

The knowledge of family trees of the predecessors and descendants of the owners and residents of a property is also of paramount importance. The invisible bonds that hold families together also provide clues to how objects might have descended to the present. And, they can reveal whether a home included possessions inherited from previous generations.

The Search for the Madison Interiors

To be able to recreate rooms at Montpelier a team of scholars is in search of evidence that will provide clues to what the Madisons' home looked like during the fourth President's retirement years. This process will unfold slowly as research proceeds, in part, because there is so much to track down and sift through.

There are thousands of Madison papers that need to be examined — correspondence of friends, family, and other visitors. There are newspaper accounts of visits to the former President, written for a public anxious for tidbits of information about this venerated Founder and his wife. There are public records, including wills, tax records, court cases, and the like.

The house has given up clues as well. The restoration process uncovered small fragments of wallpaper as well as indications from paint evidence that the woodwork throughout the house was a creamy white with gray baseboards. Nail holes in the original plaster in the Drawing Room and extant (existing) works of art have provided hints to the placement of the 16 or so paintings that hung in that room. The study of nail holes in the woodwork and tack holes in the floors promise to offer more clues to window and floor coverings.

The search for original objects is underway. The list of objects attributed to the Madisons’ ownership is long. But, scholars must research each piece and consider the likelihood that it once furnished Montpelier. Even if it belonged to the Madisons, was it James’ and Dolley’s, or his parents’, or is its ownership traceable to other family lines? Will extant pieces and archaeological fragments match up with descriptions of Madison belongings or lists in court documents and sales records?

It is exciting to know that there is still so much to be learned. So stay tuned as Montpelier shares its finds over the coming years.