The Crucible images
Here's new light on the economy of New England in the 1600s: If you wanted a chair, of course you didn't go to the furniture store, you went to the maker. But even a small town would most likely have three tradesmen who would sell you a chair: the joiner, the carpenter and the wheelwright, all producing chairs and other furniture in distinct styles and all competing with one another. Jim took my order for two "joint stools," selected simply because I had a picture of some specimens from the right time and place, so what you see at left is joinery. I honestly don't know how wheelwright-made chairs would differ from these, or what the carpenter would deliver. Spokes in one, chestnut beams in the other? It's fertile ground for speculation. All we knew was that some joiner's work looked like this, so Jim went away with a truckload of scrap lumber and came back with these. He could freely use scrap because the correct finish on 17th-century furniture was paint, not varnish or stain. These folks could brew superb paint from linseed oil, turpentine and a variety of pigments. Stuff lasts for hundreds of years. Our informant at Plymouth Plantation made us understand that the stools were probably plain and we should save our special effects for the case furniture.
Which we did. At right you see the extravagantly painted chest that focused the Act 1 bedchamber. Let me see, let me see, no, I don't think I can improve on "extravagant." The turned shapes, the patterns and the colors are all based on period examples from Plymouth. Americans in the 1600s and 1700s were quite strong on a few basic colors in their paint: black, white, a heavy red, a dark yellow, an intense green, and of course dark brown. Antiques Roadshow is looking for these colors on your ancestor's blanket chest. The mauve, not so much.
I liked the window. We bought a bale of half-inch bias tape from Hancock and Maurice stapled it to the back of the flat. The job went on and on. In the photo it looks double, but what you're seeing is the shadow cast on a masking flat behind the window itself. The lead connecting pieces in a real window are not called mullions; mullions are wooden frame members. What we simulated with the bias tape was the muntins. Did I mention what a lot The Crucible did for my vocabulary?
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