The Enterprise — Sean Mulkerrin David Bayne, furniture conservator for the state’s Bureau of Historic Sites, stands in front of a chair — you can see just the upholstered mahogany arm behind him — that George Washington may have sat in. Passed down through John Jay’s family, the chair and another like it were used by the First United States Congress at Federal Hall in New York City. Bayne talks from his laboratory on Peebles Island about projects he’s involved in, from Colonial restoration to furniture he’s recreating from Frank Lloyd Wright's original plans. He offers insights both practical and philosophical on the joining of art, science, and craft in this week’s podcast.

00:00 Hello, this is Melissa Hale-Spencer, the editor of the Altamont Enterprise and we are this morning in a fascinating place. We're in furniture conservation lab, which really does look like a laboratory, um, peebles island and peebles island is where the bureau bureau and historic sites is for New York state and we're here because this is the bailiwick of David. He is a furniture conservator, par excellence and he's just shown me the most remarkable thing which we'll talk about in a minute where he's recreating things that Frank Lloyd Wright built for a home in Buffalo, New York from old plans that he has to be like a detective to figure out. So thank you David for joining us. Um, I'd like to just start and find out a bit about what drew you to this field in the first place. How did you become a furniture conservator?

01:09 Well, I was a furniture maker for about 11 years and there was a program that came up at the Smithsonian and a friend of mine bet me that I couldn't get into the program. And so I took him up on the bed and I got in and it was great because, yeah, that I learned about conservation, but really I got into it mainly because I wanted to learn about furniture design and conservation is obviously subsumed designed.

01:40 So, um, I did read up a little on you and you used to also make musical instruments, is that right?

01:46 Yeah, I had one of my second or third jobs right at the beginning. I was up in Vermont and I worked for an outfit called the turn music and they specialized in Viola de Gamba is the master builder, if you will. His wife wanted to start a line of Celtic hearts. So he asked me if I would, I would build harps for him. So I built about 30 harps altogether.

02:15 So the common thread is working with wood to feel things. I'm looking for a threat because I couldn't find when you're early, you went to Reed College and studied biology.

02:25 I don't know where to get all this stuff. Yes. Um, I graduated from Reed in biology and basically I was very much interested in population biology and how animals change their behavior in order to match their environments and have maximum success specifically with birds. So I studied nesting behavior, so birds on a private island off the coast of Georgia. Then I study birds also in the Sierras and then I went back to the island in Georgia and became a woodworker. There is where I really

03:00 got started in woodworking. What a serendipitous excursion you're life has been. It was birds that you drew you to an island in Georgia where you started making furniture and a bet with a friend that got you into the Smithsonian program where you became a conservator. Wow. So why is it the conservation conserving furniture has subsumed the design furniture, which is where you started. What about it rivets you? Why is that?

03:30 Where the biology at Reed, obviously it's a science and before that as a chemistry major, so having the chemistry background in the science background as a whole put together with the craft of building furniture was perfect for conservation because that's what conservatives are basically trying to do. Conservatives are in know a lot about historic materials and techniques, how things are put together. So I use the biology to identify what kind of woods there are, for example, and then I might use the science to figure out what kind of coatings that are used a microscope, figure out what the code is r and then the design as a result of that. You learn about what materials would be used at certain time periods in certain cultures and so therefore you start to get into the design part

04:21 and what has kept you at it all these years. You've been here.

04:27 I've been here somewhere around 25 years. That's a good job.

04:33 What, what's the main be no typical day, but if there were, what, what would it consist of?

04:39 Um, some of it is insanely tedious. Some of it you can't imagine anybody doing, but then there's also real highlights and we were talking earlier about the Frank Lloyd Wright project, but also the chairs behind you. For example, those chairs were used by the signers of the bill of rights and the two chairs over there were used by skylar Philip skylar, who was the father of lies of skylar who married Alexander Hamilton. So it's quite possible that Hamilton and Eliza, those shirts.

05:15 Well, so let's back up and hear about the chairs right behind me. Just could you describe, because we don't have any visuals that you know, what, what, what period there from what style they're in and what it is you're going to do to them to make them.

05:32 That's a lot to answer for. The chairs are basically around probably going to get this wrong. 17, 87, 17, 89. They were built for the very first US Senate when the, uh, right after the winning of the war, the first US Congress met in New York City and they converted in order to make room for everybody to meet. They took city hall, remade it into what was then called Federal Hall and the architect and know in New York City. That's important. That's the only New York state of course. Well, yeah, they only met there for one year. They only met there once and then they moved to Philadelphia and then they moved to Washington DC. So.

06:24 But uh, so the architect I was hired to convert city hall and their Federal Hall, his name was Pierre Lafont and he's the one that designed Washington DC and so he was the architect and he probably, and he was also a colleague or a friend with the Compton Musa who is the French ambassador. The Moose and George Washington were good friends. They were hung out, hung out together. So it is quite likely possible that Lafont may have designed those chairs. He would have been familiar with the French antecedents are those chairs and he said this is the latest and the greatest, just what you need for your new building and let's build some. That's a very shorthand version version. So it's a great version, but

07:16 true. How do you or anyone, how did they come to you with this provenance? Is that right?

07:27 They're in the John Jay historic site, which is down in Westchester County in Cazenovia, Catona and John Jay. We have good records. John Jay, when he left to become governor of New York, he had some chairs transferred to his what was going to be used a retirement home in Catona and so yes, there's four chairs came from there and then the. There's another four in existence and they are down at the New York historical society. They may be the first example of a of this type of French here in the US, and it subsequently was copied. It became a popular form.

08:13 Yes, it looks for me. I didn't know the history. So what is your job with these chairs? What are you going to do these chairs and then what? What happened to them when you're finished?

08:25 The chairs have been. They were in the family, so the chairs were considerably broken up. There is apocryphal stories of the kids pushing each other up and down the chair, down the hall, in the chairs, using the casters on the bottom. As a result, the arms have been on. Almost all of them have been broken off and there's examples of the legs broken off since we are interpreting the house for when the family lived there. These are, we're going to basically try to keep them as chairs. They're going to look like old chairs because they're going into an old house. However, the upholstery will be new and in order to the upholstery that has been put on in the past, it has been so many campaigns. It's destroyed the frame and a lot of ways. There's the nails and the nail holes are historical documents, so we don't want to put in more nails and wreck the frames anymore. So what we're going to do is make frames that. What I'm going to do is make frames that sit inside that then we can upholster and cover so it looked like it's nailed onto the frame.

09:32 Actually just intercede here because as we came to David's lab, we walked down a Carter where he pointed out he's not alone in these pursuits and he has what does by let me see, textile room, x Ray room framing and roofing paper lab. So there's a whole hallway of people in this old warehouse on this beautiful island in the Hudson River. Then are working away on the various parts of restoring our history. Um, I'd love it if you could just tell us about these other two chairs you pointed to in the same kind of way. What do you know about them?

10:15 Um, that one is a little more speculative. Yes. They were owned by Philip skylar. They were in Schuyler Mansion. We know that where they're going back to you and that's where they're going to go back. They're made out of satin wood, which is a rare, very rare wood. And it's very unusual to use solid wood to make chairs. So these are carved shield back chairs with a cone with a raking profile. And they were probably, well they're not probably. They were made in England. It probably were London. We're fairly certain that they're pretty high style. This is about the best. You could get about 1790 in this case. And so it's interesting to Philip Skylar, classic revolutionary war Patriot is buying furniture from the enemy. What's also interesting is that. Well No, let's not get into that, but anyways. Yes. And so they were brought over there, sat would they have painted flowers and decorations on the front and then they were covered with gold silk damask and so again, we're going to try to do the upholstery so that the doesn't put any more nail holes or anything else into the frame and also that way on both thej chairs in the skyler chair.

11:41 She can take off the upholstery if you want to look at the frame and figure out, you know, what's the evidence there?

11:46 So you're thinking of the future and people like you in the future wanting to lose pieces of furniture.

11:51 Yeah. Almost all of conservation is based on the idea that I reserve the right to be smarter today, tomorrow than I am today. So somebody. So the idea is that somebody's gonna come along. They might have more evidence or they might have more analytical tools or they might just basically have a whole lot more skills than any meet me or any of my colleagues do. And so they could take everything apart that we've done and then they could do it the way they think is right.

12:23 So just a couple of followup questions on that. I've never heard of satin. What does that. A tree. There's a tree.

12:29 Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Would is a treat and it grows in the West indies, which would be the Caribbean

12:38 and you're, we're sure that these chairs were made in England and it's a great historical interpretation you had buying from the enemy, but just how do you know, like how can you tell that it was made in England? What kinds of things?

12:52 Um, well, the sophistication of the design would be. It's basically you have to have a good understanding of cone geometry in order to bait to build those chairs. It's an inverted cone. And you. This won't work to describe it verbally, but visually, yes, you could see that there's that part of it. And then the, there's just not a market. They would have been so expensive. There's just would not have been a market in the colonies for that. And also for the chairs behind you. Those chairs. There was again the John Jay chairs. Those were the, one of the people that we think worked on that set in the seventies and eighties, then moved to Philadelphia and there's a. He trained other people and also made some very sophisticated furniture that just there's only a few pieces that are.

13:50 And there's one other piece that keeps drawing my eye and I think you mentioned it's a table upside down waiting for you to figure out how to reproduce it or replicated. And I think you said it was from a national.

14:05 Tell us about that too. This is, this is a pretty unusual project for us. The National Park Service got in touch with us and they asked if they could make copies of furniture. That was Ed Skyler Mansion. There's a chair there. They wanted a copy and that table they want to copy. And the National Park Service has a site up the Hudson valley near Saratoga. Saratoga springs and that used to be skyler's country house, so Philip Skylar, he had a big mansion in Albany, which was a big showplace, pretty also had a country place that was up the river and that's where all of his farms and his mind and all of that's where he made his money was up there, so he was the national park service wants to tell the story of the family going from one house to the other and bringing stuff from the house up to the up to their, to their property, so they're having these tables and chairs replicated to tell that story.

15:11 So not knowing anything about this. Again, it just. How do you find a piece of wood that one leaf of the table that you can see from where we're sitting, it looks like it's wider than the yard. Isn't that. That's a single piece of wood. That's a single piece of wood. How do you find a single piece of wood? The trees are Hogan that were that.

15:31 That was also not gonna. Find a Mahogany. Have that quality basic. The real short answer, and I don't mean to be flippant, it's not my problem. Somebody gives you the supplies and all I, all I'm doing is making the table and the chair. Oh, we're doing just making the table and the chair available for craftsmen to make copies and he's going to come in here and make drawings and take dimensions and then it's up to him to come up with the wood and it just seems like that might be a problem. It will be a problem. Yeah.

16:10 So before we sat in front of our microphones, um, David was showing me this fascinating project that I hope he can just kind of walk through even though the visuals are so important, but just, you know, through the microphones. I'm the Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, a Frank Lloyd Wright building, which I'm Frank Lloyd Wright. It was typical design, the furniture for as well. And Martin, there was a wonderful quote in the article that you wrote. He used a French braids like tooth ensemble, uh, you know, he altogether was Matt Tucson stomping my feet or something altogether. It was magnificent. And so David has spread out on a work table, a copy of a plan for furniture that was drawn by, right and notated by the client that was getting the house down when Martin and he has also photographs black and white photos of this furniture. And just can you describe to me the process that you went through drawing those lines and figuring out what the exchange was.

17:23 The drawing that you were talking about is annotated and there's, it seems as though right and Martin probably with their heads together. We're trying to figure out. I think what was happening is mart was Martin was making suggestions. This is what I would want. I want you to change your design. And so they made all these scribble marks on it, but there's contradictions and it's hard to figure out which one, which of the possibilities was actually made. So. But there are photographs of this chair in particular that the chair no longer exists or we can't find copies of it or nobody knows we're looking. I don't know. But anyways, we want to make copies of that chair. So there are photographs or the chair. And I'm looking at the chair in the photograph and using perspective lines to try to figure out what the actual dimensions were that the chair was built at. So the say for example, the arm high, there's three different or maybe even four different possibilities for the height of the arm on the chair which were with those four were built. So I go back to the photograph and then I scale off the photograph using the other objects in the photograph to figure out what the scale is and then come up with what the actual as built height was.

18:44 Yeah. And what you did do was it was a compromise that Martin had wanted 22 inches for instance, in one height and he got 19. Just seeing an interplay happening. Currently it's actually way in the past. Right. Well, one thing I wanted to ask you about, I know that I'm on Saturday, October 20th. I'm the SCO herring historical society is having you speak at the old stone Ford in a workshop. And I just wonder. I know you can't recreate a whole workshop in a few minutes for us, but the kinds of things if you give these workshops are on Saturday that people might expect to be finding or learning or what kind of. What can the layman learn from all your expertise I guess is the question.

19:38 Well, the workshop, the old show in for it is set up for Karen handling basically and that is the sort of the bread and butter of conservation, meaning that a lot of conservation starts with housekeepers and how you do housekeeping determines how the furniture in my case or any other object might survive through the years. So if you have good housekeeping, if you take care of things nicely, they'll come out in a certain way

20:09 now. Like at John Jay chairs with kids running up and down, but so like what are, what are tenants of good housekeeping

20:17 handling is one and you hit the nail on the head. Yeah. If you want, your chair still lasts forever. You don't run him up and down the hall with kids pushing, pushing other kids, you know, and so manliness part of it. And then cleaning would be another part,

20:35 what can we learn about cleaning those of us that don't have historic furniture of this magnitude, you know, kind of 1800 stuff that we're fond of. I mean what like how should we, or should we be cleaning?

20:49 Well, if you think about it, well, the way I think about it is the number one, there's a variety of things that can deteriorate furniture or any other decorative object. It could be that the temperature is too high. It could be that the relativity relative humidity is too high, and very importantly it could be that the light is too strong, but really the number one agent of deterioration as people, it's people who need to use or want to use the furniture, the furniture that survived in King Tut's tomb, for example, that's in great shape until somebody opened the tomb and started pulling it out. So what you try to do for good housekeeping is do as little as you possibly can. Dusting would be as great trying not to use strong chemicals or, or soaps or detergents. Try not to bang into things like even if you're vacuuming, I've seen lots of damage just from vacuum cleaning.

21:47 Please elucidate because I think we all vacuum what? What damage can we do?

21:52 I can tell you from firsthand experience, I was vacuuming underneath my grandfather's chested drawers and I pulled off a big chunk of ears, so you pushing the vacuum underneath. You pull it back out in the vineyard, pops off around the bottoms of chairs. If you're waxing your floors or if you're. You could get all kinds of crap basically, and the bottoms of your chairs or the other way to go is if you really. If you really want to get it clean, so you take a very ammonia eat cleaner and you can strip varnishes off fairly quickly. Or if you insist upon having your grandmother's needlework displayed in a bright sunny room, it's going to fade in no time. So and likewise with paper documents. If you have a photograph or if you have a watercolor drawing that's going to fade with light and you never, you can never recover that.

22:49 That extra for this special glass that they say protects it. It's really good.

22:53 It just retards it. It just slows it down. The deterioration is ongoing,

22:58 so the lesson is keep it out of the light,

23:01 but that contradicts with the whole reason for having it.

23:05 I know you wrote in one of your articles about how museums, if they display something for even a period of weeks then have it rest I think was the phrase you used in the dark for a long period of time, but in household and what about is it bad to polisher wax furniture or

23:21 it can't. It can't be. It depends on how you do it and just playing wax is not corrosive. It won't take off varnishes or anything like that and it's fairly easy to get it off, but the process of putting on the wax and manipulating the furniture in and polishing it really hard to rubbing at it really hard with your hands that break. Things that can pull veneers off and can be destructive and that's what I've been saying for years and years in a museum setting. But then I talked to a restorer, a friend of mine, and she said, don't tell him to wax, because basically from her point of view, she's seeing furniture that gets wax like every six months and so there's a tremendous wax build up. How often should you wax if you're going to do it? So based upon her experience, I would say no more than you have to. If you get to the point where it's getting smudgy, it's probably time to figure out a way to take the wax off and then start the whole process over again. I would say, you know, at our, at our sites, which we probably don't wax more than every four or five years, I would say.

24:38 Before we sat in front of our microphones, you had mentioned that your job, it seems more than job. I have vocation, I guess, vocation. Anyway, it was enjoying the art, science and craft and I was just hoping you could unpack that a little. I think you indicated that the craft part of it maybe fallen a little by the wayside.

25:04 Well, it's interesting. I just attended a symposium down in Delaware and they were talking about the Asian influences on American decorative arts and it was a bunch of curators you like you might expect in art historians, and they were trying to come up with documentation or some other way to show that something from some idea from Asia got to Europe or the United States, but it also could be done through craft. You could see something like the chairs behind you. That would be a good example. Those chairs perhaps were inspired by a French designer and they were made by American craftsman, but there was somebody in Philadelphia whose name is Thomas South Affleck. He came up, he saw those chairs and so he made copies of those chairs in his own idea, so down in Philadelphia, and those were the chairs that are now used, etc. For the second us senate.

26:04 So there was an idea which where the, the design was being transmitted by a craFtsman. It wasn't a designer saying, I want you to build this. It's a craftsman who are saying, I want to build. These are your roots because you were a craftsman, right, and so the Frank Lloyd wright project redesigning or re engineering, that chair, I have to sort of USe my craft background and Say, okay, the joinery here would probably be this or that. Depending upon the situation and varnishes would be another way to look at it. VarniShes is also a craft and the coatings that were put on things so you can look at the coatings, find out what the original coatings are, and that tells you the level of sophistication of the original craftsman. It also can tell you the trade routes. For example, if something has a lacquer on it, that lacquer came from asia income from the United States, but you could have european or western imitations of lacquer, so then you have, again, it's craft you, okay. What is the. How do you make a varnish? How do I get that asian look when I'm making a varnish.

27:23 You an art science cracked and detective work. So much of each thing you described he has to do with. It's almost like you're a doctor trying to figure out what's medically wrong with somebody you know, like it's easy.

27:40 Gather these. Yeah. The part that I haven't really mentioned yet is the curators. The cure, the curators. They can come up with genealogies. They can come up with styles, they can come up with receipts, letters, all that kind of stuff, and then they might come back in those chairs. The chairs is another. Well the Frank Lloyd wright chairs. There's an also an example. They can say, well this is what I've got. Does this chair match that description? And that's where that's also the inner

28:13 there detective or social history with with the actual physical object right now saying, well, our half an hour went way too fast. Is there anything you have that you think is important? I know there's tons, but I didn't ask about that you have is closing thoughts or anything?

28:33 I'm not too much. It's just I want to put in a plug for the old stone for it and let's go. Harry historical society. They have a really cool collection. I went over there to look at it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I'd never heard of the hairy chest that they have there, which is pretty neat. It's a painted chest full cart kind of thing and I worked at this shelburne museum, which is folk art capital. Oh, cool. Oh really? Want me. And so yeah. This is. This is an example of a regional art form that got developed in sco, harry, and it's pretty cool stuff

29:14 and that's there all the time. Even if it's the learning at your workshop, they can go see that one.

29:18 Yeah, I'm not, I'm not. I'm not doing any conservation work for them.

29:22 Yeah. Great. Well thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah,

29:27 hope it works for you.

None of these leaders, from the local, state, and federal levels, minimized the risks of the latest variant of concern, the highly contagious Omicron variant. On Monday, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the Omicron variant now accounts for about 70 percent of new cases in the United States. Rather, they stressed the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted as well as wearing masks.

GUILDERLAND — Guilderland Police are looking for a “person of interest” — Jason Seminary, age 43

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