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sillygoosegirl) wrote2006-06-27 01:09 pm
sillygoosegirl) wrote2006-06-27 01:09 pm
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Article about curtains like the one at the Kinton Grange
This is an article about landscape backdrops like the one Josh and I got married in front of at the Kinton Grange! Cool, eh?
We, The Kinton Grange Players, found the backdrop which Josh and I used in our wedding, and another one, when we remodeled the stage for our last performance, "Snow White and the Seven Riding Hoods." Long story short, when we got to the Grange, the stage was boxed in with three little entrances, and we'd gotten fed up with working with them and wanted a real stage with some semblance of wing, etc, so we removed the inner walls and ceiling, and up in the attic, inaccessible without removing the ceiling, were these two amazing curtains... thus we concluded that our remodeled stage is probably much more like the original than the boxed in stage was. They were (and are) in excellent condition, and so old that the phone numbers on the ads (the one we didn't use for the wedding had ads for local businesses) were only 4 digits!
The backdrop from the Kinton Grange (right before our wedding)
Note that the red curtains are real, the purple ones are part of the backdrop.
The Curtain Rises on Old Vermont
Jerry Swope for The New York Times
At the town hall in Fairlee, Vt., the grand drape has been restored by the Vermont Painted Theater Curtain Project, directed by Chris Hadsel. More Photos >
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: June 25, 2006
TOPSHAM, Vt. — They served as backdrops for countless high school performances of "A Christmas Carol" at the town hall here, and elsewhere in Vermont they set the stage for Gilbert and Sullivan operas, traveling minstrel shows and vaudeville acts.
Slide Show: Painted Curtains
Over the past few years, hundreds of hand-painted theater curtains that once hung on small stages in Vermont's opera houses and in its town and Grange halls have been found and are being revived thanks to a statewide preservation effort, the Vermont Painted Theater Curtain Project.
The project began in 1998, when the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance tried to inventory the state's theater curtains, asking all 251 of the state's town and city clerks for help.
In 2001, Chris Hadsel, who started the project while at the alliance, began to solicit state and federal money to repair the drapes. The grants, now totaling about $500,000, paid for most of the project, along with money from each city or town involved.
Most of the curtains were made and used from 1880 to 1940, when traveling acts and local productions performed in opera houses or town halls, most of which also housed a community center with a stage. The towns bought the drapes from local artists or from mass producers. But acts stopped coming, opera houses closed, local performances shifted to high schools and towns began ignoring their stages.
The painted-curtain tradition is largely a New England phenomenon, though some places in the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic have also used the drapes. Vermont is the first state to do this kind of inventory, and there are efforts to duplicate the project in New Hampshire.
The muslin curtains all show landscape scenes, some of local lakes or mountains, others of romanticized versions of Venice or the Swiss Alps, still others of unspecified forests or Main Streets. Many were stashed in attics or basements. Some remained hanging on stages but were not cared for. All were caked in dust and grime, faded and torn to varying degrees. Some towns did not know they existed until Ms. Hadsel asked clerks to look in storage areas.
"Nobody really paid attention to them," she said.
As of this month, Ms. Hadsel has found 170 curtains. Of those, 103 have been repaired, mostly by volunteers in the towns where the curtains were found. After a drape is repaired, a group of "curtain caretakers" acts as its local steward. The goal, Ms. Hadsel said, is to ensure that the curtains last for an additional 100 years.
"We're not recreating new curtains," she said. "We're trying to give them a new life."
Some towns hope their refurbished curtains will bring people back to neglected stages, while others are simply thrilled to reclaim a piece of their history.
"People are realizing that these things are irreplaceable," said Bud Otterman, 80, a lifelong resident of Topsham, a town of 1,140 in eastern Vermont.
Earlier this year a group of townspeople unanimously voted to use $2,000 of the town's money to pay for restorations of their curtain, the most damaged one in the project. Their vote was largely influenced by Bill Hodge, a measured man in his 60's who residents said had pleaded to keep the curtain, which was placed in an outdoor storage area in the 1960's.
Mr. Hodge, another lifelong resident, said he remembered the curtain from his childhood. It depicted a panoramic landscape of the town dramatically rising and falling on performances. He said he also remembered Santa Claus magically appearing in front of the drape each Christmas, handing out candy to children, and high school students transforming on the same stage into kings and queens of yesteryear.
"It's pretty exciting," said Mr. Hodge, who has helped with the restoration. "It's restoring the past for the future."
Preserving this curtain, however, is taking time and patience. Water severely damaged the oil paint, causing it to seep and run. It is dotted with mold.
Michele Pagan, a textile conservationist on the project, and Wylie Garcia, a conservation technician, have carefully vacuumed dirt from the curtain, which measures 17 feet 8 inches by 8 feet 3 inches.
"They're so fragile but so strong," Ms. Hadsel said.
That resilience has allowed Ms. Hadsel to take an everyman's approach to the preservation. Her toolkit includes a vacuum, dry sponges for removing dirt, needles and thread, and clear iron-on patches to mend tears.
Generally the curtains are taken off their rollers and laid out wherever there is room — on floors, lunch tables or stages. Each drape takes a week to 10 days to finish. Different volunteers help each day, and the curtains are rehung once they are cleaned and patched.
Some were in excellent condition, like two in Chelsea, where a high school just performed "Peter Pan" using a cleaned-up woodland scene and one with a city street. Others, including one in Vergennes, were faded and weathered.
"We didn't know what to expect," Jim McDaid of West Fairlee said about the town's 106-year-old drape, which is meant to look like a framed painting of nearby Lake Kezar draped by a red velvet curtain. It had been rolled up for decades and was in decent condition. It now hangs proudly, the reds rich and the blue water sparkling.
Each refurbished curtain will return to the place where it originally hung. Four, however, will be on display at Shelburne Farms, an educational center on the shores of Lake Champlain, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 22.
Georgette Wolf-Ludwig, the town clerk of Fairlee, hopes the project will help the town reclaim its close sense of community, reviving traditions like family bingo and movies, and the annual fireman follies.
"We're hoping it will spark some interest in that space," Ms. Wolf-Ludwig said about the upstairs of the town hall.
Fairlee's 100-year-old curtain, which was stored in an attic for about 35 years and now hangs on the town hall stage, will be unveiled at a ceremony on July 23.
"It's just a thrill," she said. "We're ecstatic over it."
We, The Kinton Grange Players, found the backdrop which Josh and I used in our wedding, and another one, when we remodeled the stage for our last performance, "Snow White and the Seven Riding Hoods." Long story short, when we got to the Grange, the stage was boxed in with three little entrances, and we'd gotten fed up with working with them and wanted a real stage with some semblance of wing, etc, so we removed the inner walls and ceiling, and up in the attic, inaccessible without removing the ceiling, were these two amazing curtains... thus we concluded that our remodeled stage is probably much more like the original than the boxed in stage was. They were (and are) in excellent condition, and so old that the phone numbers on the ads (the one we didn't use for the wedding had ads for local businesses) were only 4 digits!
The backdrop from the Kinton Grange (right before our wedding)
Note that the red curtains are real, the purple ones are part of the backdrop.
The Curtain Rises on Old Vermont
Jerry Swope for The New York Times
At the town hall in Fairlee, Vt., the grand drape has been restored by the Vermont Painted Theater Curtain Project, directed by Chris Hadsel. More Photos >
By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: June 25, 2006
TOPSHAM, Vt. — They served as backdrops for countless high school performances of "A Christmas Carol" at the town hall here, and elsewhere in Vermont they set the stage for Gilbert and Sullivan operas, traveling minstrel shows and vaudeville acts.
Slide Show: Painted Curtains
Over the past few years, hundreds of hand-painted theater curtains that once hung on small stages in Vermont's opera houses and in its town and Grange halls have been found and are being revived thanks to a statewide preservation effort, the Vermont Painted Theater Curtain Project.
The project began in 1998, when the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance tried to inventory the state's theater curtains, asking all 251 of the state's town and city clerks for help.
In 2001, Chris Hadsel, who started the project while at the alliance, began to solicit state and federal money to repair the drapes. The grants, now totaling about $500,000, paid for most of the project, along with money from each city or town involved.
Most of the curtains were made and used from 1880 to 1940, when traveling acts and local productions performed in opera houses or town halls, most of which also housed a community center with a stage. The towns bought the drapes from local artists or from mass producers. But acts stopped coming, opera houses closed, local performances shifted to high schools and towns began ignoring their stages.
The painted-curtain tradition is largely a New England phenomenon, though some places in the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic have also used the drapes. Vermont is the first state to do this kind of inventory, and there are efforts to duplicate the project in New Hampshire.
The muslin curtains all show landscape scenes, some of local lakes or mountains, others of romanticized versions of Venice or the Swiss Alps, still others of unspecified forests or Main Streets. Many were stashed in attics or basements. Some remained hanging on stages but were not cared for. All were caked in dust and grime, faded and torn to varying degrees. Some towns did not know they existed until Ms. Hadsel asked clerks to look in storage areas.
"Nobody really paid attention to them," she said.
As of this month, Ms. Hadsel has found 170 curtains. Of those, 103 have been repaired, mostly by volunteers in the towns where the curtains were found. After a drape is repaired, a group of "curtain caretakers" acts as its local steward. The goal, Ms. Hadsel said, is to ensure that the curtains last for an additional 100 years.
"We're not recreating new curtains," she said. "We're trying to give them a new life."
Some towns hope their refurbished curtains will bring people back to neglected stages, while others are simply thrilled to reclaim a piece of their history.
"People are realizing that these things are irreplaceable," said Bud Otterman, 80, a lifelong resident of Topsham, a town of 1,140 in eastern Vermont.
Earlier this year a group of townspeople unanimously voted to use $2,000 of the town's money to pay for restorations of their curtain, the most damaged one in the project. Their vote was largely influenced by Bill Hodge, a measured man in his 60's who residents said had pleaded to keep the curtain, which was placed in an outdoor storage area in the 1960's.
Mr. Hodge, another lifelong resident, said he remembered the curtain from his childhood. It depicted a panoramic landscape of the town dramatically rising and falling on performances. He said he also remembered Santa Claus magically appearing in front of the drape each Christmas, handing out candy to children, and high school students transforming on the same stage into kings and queens of yesteryear.
"It's pretty exciting," said Mr. Hodge, who has helped with the restoration. "It's restoring the past for the future."
Preserving this curtain, however, is taking time and patience. Water severely damaged the oil paint, causing it to seep and run. It is dotted with mold.
Michele Pagan, a textile conservationist on the project, and Wylie Garcia, a conservation technician, have carefully vacuumed dirt from the curtain, which measures 17 feet 8 inches by 8 feet 3 inches.
"They're so fragile but so strong," Ms. Hadsel said.
That resilience has allowed Ms. Hadsel to take an everyman's approach to the preservation. Her toolkit includes a vacuum, dry sponges for removing dirt, needles and thread, and clear iron-on patches to mend tears.
Generally the curtains are taken off their rollers and laid out wherever there is room — on floors, lunch tables or stages. Each drape takes a week to 10 days to finish. Different volunteers help each day, and the curtains are rehung once they are cleaned and patched.
Some were in excellent condition, like two in Chelsea, where a high school just performed "Peter Pan" using a cleaned-up woodland scene and one with a city street. Others, including one in Vergennes, were faded and weathered.
"We didn't know what to expect," Jim McDaid of West Fairlee said about the town's 106-year-old drape, which is meant to look like a framed painting of nearby Lake Kezar draped by a red velvet curtain. It had been rolled up for decades and was in decent condition. It now hangs proudly, the reds rich and the blue water sparkling.
Each refurbished curtain will return to the place where it originally hung. Four, however, will be on display at Shelburne Farms, an educational center on the shores of Lake Champlain, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 22.
Georgette Wolf-Ludwig, the town clerk of Fairlee, hopes the project will help the town reclaim its close sense of community, reviving traditions like family bingo and movies, and the annual fireman follies.
"We're hoping it will spark some interest in that space," Ms. Wolf-Ludwig said about the upstairs of the town hall.
Fairlee's 100-year-old curtain, which was stored in an attic for about 35 years and now hangs on the town hall stage, will be unveiled at a ceremony on July 23.
"It's just a thrill," she said. "We're ecstatic over it."