The past can call from unexpected places. Sometimes, it speaks from the small, hidden world beyond reach of the naked eye.
Kirsten Travers Moffitt knows how to listen.
Moffitt, a conservator and materials analyst for Colonial Williamsburg’s Department of Conservation, uses advanced technology to analyze material culture — the objects and structures that people create and use in their everyday life. She and other members of the conservation team uncover facts about the past when historical records might otherwise be silent.
“Our department is concerned with preserving our collections, and to do that, we need to better understand the objects,” Moffitt said.
The materials analysis lab where Moffitt works has a suite of high-tech tools that help conservators draw conclusions about the past. Among the tools are a handheld X-ray fluorescence analyzer, a nondestructive instrument which determines the elements present in an object, and a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy microscope, which can identify a sample’s molecular composition. An even more targeted analysis — at magnification of up to 130,000 times — can be performed with a scanning electron microscope.
While their names might not exactly roll off the tongue, these tools provide critical insight to help Colonial Williamsburg interpret and preserve its world-class collections.
With a gift for transforming the complex concepts of science and history into easily understandable ideas, Moffitt is, in a sense, an ambassador for the special role that science plays in understanding history.
That dexterity is born of experience. Moffitt earned a master’s degree in art conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, and before joining Colonial Williamsburg in 2010 her work took her throughout the U.S. and Europe, where she restored art and objects, focusing on the treatment and analysis of painted surfaces. She is the author of academic papers on paint analysis, and she teaches paint microscopy at her alma mater, and is a sought-after speaker on the subject at professional conferences.
One of Moffitt’s first responsibilities at the foundation was the analysis of architectural paint evidence left in Colonial Williamsburg’s original buildings. As the Foundation collected sophisticated tools for the newly established materials analysis lab, Moffitt narrowed her focus to the tiny traces that technology could uncover, especially in paint.
It is to Moffitt and this technology that conservators can turn to establish a time period when a layer of paint was likely applied. To do this, it’s important not just to know what materials the paint contains, but also how this fits within the timeline of paint technology. “When it comes to pigments, we have a lot of ‘cannot exist before’ dates,” Moffitt said.
So, how can peering into paint at the granular level offer solid evidence of, or at least rule out, specific time periods?
The Bray-Digges House offers one example.
Moffitt’s cross-section analysis of a sample of paint from the structure showed that many layers of paint had been applied through the years — a common occurrence in Colonial Williamsburg’s original structures.
“In many of Colonial Williamsburg’s buildings, I’m going to find at least 20 paint generations,” Moffitt said.
When magnified, each of those layers tells a story. The uneven brushstrokes of long-ago paint jobs contrast with more modern applications that are infused with additives that cause the paint to settle and dry more uniformly. There are often unexpected colors and, sometimes, no color at all.
Colonial Williamsburg Architectural Historian Jennifer Wilkoski said that after the Bray-Digges House was determined to have housed the Bray School — an 18th-century school for enslaved and free Black children — she and her colleagues spent a couple of years in an architectural investigation phase, looking very carefully at the building’s woodwork and timber frame and uncovering construction materials, such as plaster, in preparation for its move and restoration.
“As architectural historians, we can look at elements and say stylistically that it looks like the 18th or 19th century,” Wilkoski said. “When Kirsten comes in, we can fine-tune what we’re seeing.”
Moffitt’s analysis indicated that the earliest layer of paint in the Bray-Digges House was made with a pigment called chrome yellow, dating the paint layer to the early 19th century, when chrome yellow was first produced. Underneath that paint was bare wood covered in grime, leading to the conclusion that the interior was unpainted when it was a schoolhouse.
Wilkoski said that Moffitt’s analysis also helps inform larger understandings of 18th-century life. The Bray-Digges House, for example, was originally built as a tenement, or rental house. Colonial Williamsburg has several similar structures in the Historic Area. An analysis of the Bracken Tenement in the 1990s showed that it, too, was originally unpainted. “This is opening up more questions,” Wilkoski said. “Are tenements all or more commonly unpainted in the 18th century?”
Sometimes Moffitt’s work reveals evidence of incremental progress. In the 1990s, for example, Colonial Williamsburg conservators used the techniques available at the time to analyze the original paint scheme of the parlor of the Thomas Everard House. They discovered that in the 1770s Everard had painted the woodwork a green color using a copper-based pigment called verdigris. Based on that analysis, verdigris paint was made and applied in 1995. Recent analysis conducted by Moffitt with current technology showed that the composition of the 1995 paint was not completely accurate. Based on this new understanding, conservators can now more precisely replicate characteristics of the paint such as gloss, thickness and transparency as well as color.
Moffitt’s findings have also introduced procedures to mitigate potential hazards. Working with Archaeological Materials Conservator Kate McEnroe, for example, Moffitt analyzed fabric unearthed by Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists. Two separate samples turned out to be asbestos.
“With Kirsten’s findings, we created different safety protocols because of that discovery,” McEnroe said. “So now we have a whole new process that begins in the field sealing items that could possibly be asbestos in bags.”
In fact, many of the artifacts McEnroe works with have come fresh from the ground or are among the millions of objects Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists have excavated through the years. “With fresh material,” McEnroe said, “we’re more likely to ask, ‘What is this?’ Something found long ago that is being analyzed later, we ask, ‘What happened?’”
New discoveries and acquisitions by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation — along with nearly a hundred years of collections already on hand — mean Moffitt’s expertise is always needed in some corner of the museum.
“We’re not choosing a red-brown paint for the Peyton Randolph House just because we like it,” Moffitt said. “We are data-driven and evidence-based.”
Ben Swenson is a freelance writer based in Williamsburg, Virginia.