Introduction

[Nick Redding] How do we know what we know about historic buildings? There’s obviously the wood, brick, and mortar that make up the building and sometimes we even have written records. But today, we’re talking about the paint. Dr. Susan Buck is one of the most sorts after experts in the field of paint chip analysis. Join us for a conversation on Susan’s work on projects from Monticello in Virginia to the Forbidden City in China and on items from the 19th century to Egyptian coffins from the 5th century B.C. What can we learn from a paint chip the size of a pinhead? Find out on this week’s PreserveCast.

[Nick Redding] This is Nick Redding. You’re listening to PreserveCast. We are joined today by Susan Buck who earned her Ph.D. in Art Conservation Research at the University of Delaware in 2003 and her Masters from the Winterthur, the University of a Delaware Program in Art Conservation. And she has worked a litany of some of the nation’s greatest historical sites from Colonial Williamsburg, to Mount Vernon, to Monticello, Montpelier, to historic Charleston, Draten Hall, and she’s even done work at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. And we are really pleased to have her here today to talk with us about really a great intersection of technology and preservation, which is the work that she does in paint chip analysis and art conservation and all of those exciting fields. And so, Susan, it’s a pleasure to have you here with us today.

[Susan Buck] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be talking to you.

[NR] Yeah. And so Susan, we’d love to learn more about our guest’s background and how they got into this work. We’re you always a fan of history? How did you get into this line of work?

[SB] I actually came into it a little bit indirectly. I was a studio art major in college and learned about art conservation in my senior year and found it to be a path that was intriguing. But at that point, couldn’t go back to get the chemistry that I needed to really move ahead with it and go to graduate school. And it took me about 10 years to realize that this, in fact, was the field that I should be in. And so, I changed my work patterns abruptly, took the chemistry, had some internships at museums and got into the Master’s program at the Winterthur University of Delaware Art Conservation program. And this was the moment where my life changed. This was where I found my direction and this was actually also where I learned the tools, the microscopy tools, that I use every day now in my work.

[NR] Well, I think that’s a good segue to actually talk about your work itself which is so fascinating. I know working in historic preservation, we go into buildings and people say, “Oh, well, we don’t know what color this room was.” And I sort of blow their mind by saying, “Well, did you know that there’s a process for doing this?” Now, of course, I’m a layman when it comes to this. I don’t really know how the process works, I just know that it does work and that there are smart people like you who can do it. So what is it that you do? What is paint chip analysis and how does that all work?

[SB] Well, what I do actually derives from the analysis in 1950s, beginning when people were starting to look at easel painting to try to understand how the paints that changed over time and what kind of vanishes were obscuring the images and were there alterations or changes? And this involves taking tiny, tiny samples of paint and embedding them in polyester resin for a permanent mount and then polishing them to expose the layers so that you can view them in cross-section under a microscope. And under the microscope, you would see all the layers applied from the very bottom canvas or ground layer up the top varnish coating. And this is what I learned in graduate school and immediately when I began my work career, saw how it would apply directly to looking at a whole range of materials of art objects and architecture. And this type of technology has been evolving over time and we learn about how to interpret these samples and the equipment keeps getting more and more sophisticated.

[NR] And so you work in private practice in your firm. You have your lab, I guess?

[SB] I do.

[NR] And how does this actually work? So you said you take a paint chip and it’s embedded – I guess is it a piece of sort of plastic like polyester – and then that plastic cube is something that is polished so that you can see all the different layers almost like an archaeological dig. And so you can see all these different paint layers. You can learn a lot from those different layers? Obviously, a lot of people are interested in color, but what are the different things in addition to color, I suppose, that you can learn just by looking at those layers?

[SB] Well, I think archaeology is great analogy because these layers, each one of them, have clues about how long a coating was exposed. Was it glossy or matte? Did it collect the dirt and was it allow to crack before it was repainted? How does the layer on one element relate to another in the same space or in another room or layers on a known alteration? So archaeology is a great description for this and I think the original color of an element is only one small question that paint analysis can answer. And most of the projects I work on now really have more to do with interpretation. And interpretation of how a building or an object has changed or what might be original versus what might be an alteration or, actually, a deliberate forgery. So all this evidence which comes from a sample – for art objects as small as a pinhead and for architecture, it may be one sixteenth or one eighth of an inch – these samples are embedded in these tiny polyester resin cubes in mini ice cube trays and then polished to expose the cross-section. And they then become a permanent record from a particular area of an object or a building; and ultimately, go back to the owner as part of the archive. But in the meantime, having this permanently embedded sample allows you to manipulate it in a way that you couldn’t with an brittled, fragile paint that didn’t have any protection. Paints tend to flake off or fall apart or be easily crushed. So you need to have some way to melt them so they can be handled and polished. And these little polyester resin cubes are low technology, but they are exactly the way that works best to look at these layers, apply it over time even though the sample may be very, very tiny. Sometimes not even visible readily to the eye.

[NR] You mentioned that the samples go back. I suppose to your point about how technology is advancing, would that allow them in the future, to go back and take a look at it?And if the technology has advanced, perhaps learn more from that same sample?

[SB] Absolutely. That’s my hope. That’s what all these samples become part of the archive for a given project. And in 50 years, if someone wants to learn more about a particular analysis project, hopefully, they’ll have my report for a record that can go back to the samples that are referenced in their report. Perhaps they have better technology, higher-powered microscopes, different illuminants, ways to look at these samples that I don’t have access now to. Or… I’m not even sure what kind of questions people might need to ask in the future. But the fact that the samples are available means it’s possible to keep going back to them and I think that’s critical. That’s really a tenet of conservation that you make a record of everything that you do and this becomes shared widely. It’s something available to other scholars, other conservators, and other people interested in this type of technique.

[NR] Now you did also mention identifying color through this process and that can be pretty controversial. I know I was just recently – I saw something online. I think it was the Ulysses S. Grant House and they had recently done some work there – the Park Service – and painted it a pretty garish green color. And I thought it was kind of neat; but I think a lot of members of the general public were really just sort of flabbergasted at this outlandish color which was based apparently on analysis. I presume that that happens a lot. How do you actually drill down and figure out what the color is though? I mean because I imagine that over time things oxidize, they get dirty, and it’s hard to figure out just by looking at it with the naked eye what the color is. Is there a technological or a chemical way of doing that?

[SB] Honestly, this is the hardest thing I do, mainly because people have such an emotional response to color. They make think that something is in very poor taste when in fact for the 18th century, it might have been highly stylish. And we find, for the most part, people don’t write much about color in the 17th and 18th and early 19th century so we don’t have good documents. So we really are relying on the physical evidence to guide us for interpretation. And you’re right that color measurement and matching is difficult because some of these pigments are ephemeral or they degrade over time. They either blanch from light exposure or they darken from weathering. They collect a lot of soot, perhaps have pigments that are sensitive to light. So sometimes you can find intact layers that have been protected from light that are decipherable in the cross-sections, which is obviously the first step. Then those samples that have still retained good paint evidence in the un-cast form, not in the cast cross-section, those can be scraped down to find areas of intact paint to be matched. I have a color measurement microscope that allows me to measure color as small as 0.3 millimeters, so I might have to take multiple measures and then re-check those colors under a controlled light source. That’s a way of documenting color; but they’re often paint layers that you simply cannot match because they are so dark and dirt-degraded. In that case you go back to the evidence found in the analysis, both the pigments and the organic binders, and you can still buy these traditional pigments at art supply stores. And I simply end up hand-grinding paints to match as closely as possible what a particular paint layer looked like when it was freshly applied. And so, for example, the brilliant green paint in the small dining room at Mount Vernon, we knew that was made with the copper-based pigment verdigris in a varnish binder. But verdigris darkens so distinctly that what survived couldn’t be measured. So we hand-ground paint to match and then that replica is based on the freshly applied brilliant green. And, in fact, Mount Vernon has continued to follow this methodology for their repainting of their period rooms now over time because there are now two key people who are making hand ground paints, Chris Mills and Erika Sanchez-Goodwillie. And they are replicating as closely as possible than traditional linseed oil base, woodwork paints, and distemper, all those paints and traditional lime washes that you might find in the 18th century or 19th century building.

[NR] So it’s not just identification of the paints that is really in intense process, but also it’s the recreation of them. So this isn’t something that you go then out to Sherwin-Williams and get them to mix up for you in order to get it to look right.  You really need to go to the other step. I suppose you could, but to really get the right feel and look of it you really need to go to that next level.

[SB] That’s true because these hand-ground paints are so different from a store-bought paint in terms of their three dimensional brush equality, they way they reflect light, the graininess that you find with some of the larger pigments. The fact that modern paints are designed to dry smooth and flat and consistent. And these early hand-bound paints are not manufactured with that kind of concern in mind. They just are qualitatively different. And when you walk into a room that’s been painted with hand-ground paints you really sense an 18th century interior as it was meant to be seen. Now many sites either don’t have the funding or the ability to commission hand-ground paints and have painters come into paint these with period 18th century round brushes so there are very good commercial paint lines that will give you the color and approximate the gloss. I think that’s what most sites do now. But the next step, which you see at sites like Stratford Hall  and Mount Vernon and I’m some areas with Monticello, they are commissioning hand-ground paints. It’s an extraordinary experience to see the paints going on and then experience the effect that they have once they’re dried.

[NR] So, Susan, I have to ask, it’s not really related to your work but sitting in your office what color is on the wall right now? [laughter]

[SB] Oh, okay. Well, I’m in a lab space so I have to be careful–

[NR] So it’s white.

[SB] –with color interfering. Yes, so the walls are white. But actually the ceilings are this very soft, wonderful pink with a slight bit of yellow in them. And they are the pink that I identified years ago at Walter Gropius’ house in Lincoln, Massachusetts on the ceilings of the kitchen and on the south-facing wall of the porch. And he described it as “Bauhaus pink,” a color that was used for scene painting, for Bauhaus theater sets. And it is an amazing paint because while you don’t really notice it, it reflects very soft, warm light down into the room. And I find it especially pleasing when my eyes are tired. But, you know, Gropius was one of those people who did write about color and he made this extraordinary effort with his house and with the choice of this particular paint color, everything was well thought out. But the pink is one that I have adopted for myself.

[NR] Well, how about that? And for people listening, that was not a setup question. I had no idea where that was going to go and I’m so pleased that you have such a cool paint on your ceiling, I would love to see it someday. Susan, let’s take a quick break here. When we come back maybe talk a little bit more about the work that you’ve done in art, I want to hear more about the Forbidden City, and where technology is heading in all of this and all of that good stuff right when we come back on PreserveCast.

And now it’s time for a Preservation Explanation

[Stephen Israel] You all know I love me some local history, but at the top of the episode Nick referenced Susan’s work with an international historical monument just too big for me to pass up. That’s the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. They’ll get into a little more about Susan’s work with it later on. But in the meantime, do you mind if I share a couple facts about a national treasure of one of the world’s oldest civilizations?

A quick disclaimer: the following pronunciations are simply me doing my best to communicate through an auditory medium. Any resemblance to actual Mandarin Chinese would be wonderful, but is likely purely coincidental.

Built over a 14 year period from 1406 to 1420 A.D., The Forbidden City is technically more of a palace. Originally built as the seat of political and ceremonial power for the Yongle emperor, the third emperor of the Ming dynasty who moved China’s capital from Nanjing to Beijing. Although we in English call it the Forbidden City, a more direct translation would be “Purple Forbidden City,” coming from the Mandarin Zijin Cheng. Historically in China, the color purple is associated with the North Star, the seat of the celestial emperor in traditional astrology. Similarly, the celestial region around North Star was home to the celestial emperor and his family. And so the Forbidden City is meant as a home for his terrestrial counterparts, the Chinese Imperial family.

Today most natives actually call it Gùgōng,  or “the Former Palace.” They say the Former Palace because even though the Ming Dynasty maintained control of the capital for over 200 years after the palace’s construction, and then there was a few months of the Shun Dyansty, and after that a few hundred years of the Qing Dynasty, it’s official use as a seat of power ended in 1912 when Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, abdicated to the Republic of China government. At that time, the Outer Court was open to public use while Pu Yi continued to live in the Inner Court until 1925, when he was evicted during a coup and the Palace Museum was established, officially marking the beginning of The Forbidden City’s existence as a very much bidden, open, public resource.

Today the Forbidden City is a UNESCO world heritage site that consists of 980 buildings with 8,886 bays of rooms. It is the largest collection of historic wooden buildings in the world. There are countless elements of its design that are packed with symbolic meaning: details from the 9′ x 9’sets of nails on all of the gates, to the very alignment and grouping of the buildings inside the walls with precise architectural intent. I could go for hours about that intent, but I’ll leave more of that to Susan who’s actually been there. In the meantime, I bid you get back to PreserveCast.

[Nick Redding] Do you have questions? We may have answers. If at any point during this podcast, you’ve thought of a question that you have for us or maybe one of our guests, we’d love to hear about it. You can send an email to podcast@presmd.org, and we’ll try and answer it right here on the air on the next episode of Preserve Cast.

[NR] This is Nick Redding. You’re listening to PreserveCast. We’re joined by Susan Buck, who has her PhD in art conservation research from the University of Delaware; and we were talking about all things paint chip analysis, and how she drills down and figures out what rooms actually looked like in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. Which did raise a question I was thinking about during the break: what is the earliest building that you’ve ever worked on?

[SB] The earliest building? Hmm, the earliest objects come to mind, which are Egyptian painted coffins.

[NR] That’s pretty early. How old are we talking here?

[SB] Fifth century B.C., I’d say.

[NR] Wow.

[SB] They are extraordinary and the pigments are beautiful under the microscope. And I do have to say that there is a world of beauty under the microscope that is hard to explain, both under reflected, visible light, and under different ultraviolet light illuminations. These materials have extraordinarily lovely colors and shapes and sizes and refractions of light. And so, actually, I also see some of these images as art as well as information.

[NR] Well, and that’s what I wanted to ask you about. Not only have you worked on buildings, and I think you could argue that a building is just a big object, but you’ve worked on objects in art in particular. What kind of art conservation work have you done in your career?

[SB] Well, it’s a considerable amount of work on painted furniture. I did a study of Hadley, Massachusetts’ polychrome painted chests, of which now there are only four that we know of. But they are brilliantly colored, although many of them survive in different states. They’re all dated about 1715 and they’re in different institutions and one in a private collection. But they clearly all were painted by the same painter with the same palette and it’s a chance to learn more about early nineteenth century practices. They are created and painted in western Massachusetts, where materials would have been less readily available. But at the same time, this painter of these polychrome chests is choosing probably the most expensive and brilliant pigments available to him. And those allowed us to learn more about this area of furniture construction and painted decoration. And then on the other hand, I’ve worked a lot on Shaker painted furniture, which I think many people see as kind of stark and monochromatic. But in fact, they were also brilliantly painted – not with decorations but solid colors, solid yellows, and bright oranges, and blues, and deep reds. And many of them got stripped in the 1920s and ’30s when the Shaker communities were retreating and consolidating. And some of the dealers actually found them more suitable for market by stripping them. And so a lot of Shaker furniture that survives is missing those coatings, but the evidence suggests most furniture was brightly painted.

[NR] And so when you say you’re working on them, what kind of work do you do on them? Are you trying to figure out the original colors, or are you actually treating them as well? Removing grime or fixing them? I mean, what kind of conservation work are you doing with respect to, let’s say, a Shaker chair?

[SB] Well, my practice has changed. So I started off as a furniture conservator and some of these projects actually involved, first, analysis to determine what was obscuring the original decorations. And then using that information to carefully clean and remove later materials without intruding into the original. So the key is to really understand how best to treat objects. Now, my practice is mostly analysis. There’s so much work out there for buildings and furniture and I don’t have the same kind of studio I used to have. So most of the work is analysis except for if I’m going on-site to a historic house museum, for example, and I want to remove later paint layers and reveal, say, a decorative grain-painted surface. Then I would actually be doing conservation treatment. But I would say my practice has changed over time and there are many, many other talented conservators that I can call on to help with these projects. So sometimes I just simply don’t have the time to do treatments and I start with the analysis and then another colleague will take over the actual treatment itself.

[NR] Yeah. And then not having the time makes sense because your name is over so many different projects that we see here in the mid-Atlantic, and I’m sure it’s the same across the country. So you obviously have your work cut out for you. I do have to ask, in your bio with all of these fantastic sites, one that does pop up – maybe because of its foreign location – is the Forbidden City in Beijing. What was that project all about? And that’s a pretty old one there, too.

[SB] Yes. And I am so lucky to be part of this project because I am still a member of this team created by the World Monuments Fund for the study and treatment of a small quadrant of the Forbidden City called the Qianlong Garden, which was created for Emperor Qianlong between 1772 and ’76. And he thought he would retire to this garden space before he ruled longer than his grandfather, the Qian Shi Emperor, so that there are 28 buildings and rockeries and gardens and hidden pathways to which he was going to retire. And they’re much more intimate than the grand spaces in the center of the Forbidden City. Basically, these spaces were never really used because he never slept one night there. And they were only sporadically used after he died. And they were closed up in 1924. And when the World Monuments Fund went looking for a project in China to really start a dialogue about conservation and study of historic buildings, they were taken to this garden quarter. And I understand that some of the doors were open and the dirt of the ages flowed out. But these buildings are almost completely intact on the interior and every interior of every building is different – different decoration, different lacquers, different decorative schemes – and so this team that I’m part of includes curators, conservators, craftspeople, both Chinese and Western consultants, and we address each building individually. So it’s a collaborative effort, both for study and determining how best to conserve them and preserve them and, ultimately, make them open to the public. It’s under the egis of the World Monuments Fund working with our colleagues at the Palace Museum, which is the entity that manages the Forbidden City.

[NR] And I presume that you’ve had the chance actually to travel there and be on-site?

[SB] Our group meets about twice a year in Beijing there. Then what’s come out of this really amazing project is also the understanding that there’s a need for professional training for conservators working in architectural materials and furniture. So now we’re teaching also in a new conservation program modeled on the Winterthur Conservation Program where students would take classes for two years and then have a third year internship before they they get their Master of Science degree and this is in partnership with Tsinghua University. And these students are so smart and so dedicated and have so much potential to do important work.

[NR] Wow, I see why you’re busy. You got a lot going on. So just curious, the technology that you’ve been using since you got in the field [and] started doing this, how much has it changed? Do you see changes coming in the future? Are those changes impacting your research and your analysis?

[SB] I do see changes and certainly, it’s happened in my professional lifetime. So when I started off with my first microscope, which was a fluorescence microscope, typically one that would be used in a hospital for cell biology research… I had one UV filter and an exterior light source and a 35-millimeter camera mounted at the top so I could take picture slides and pictures. And I would process my photos and kind of shuffle them around and try to figure out how the layers lined up. And for a while, I resisted digital microscopy. But, honestly, it became the way to go. I was teaching on a microscope where I could capture the images digitally and I realized I had to have the level of technology that my students at Winterthur had. So I bought a new microscope with a variety of UV filters and better visible light source and great digital imaging. And this allows me to do much more with these images. And also put them into reports in ways that make them much more accessible to my readers. But I do also see that the microscope technology is changing. And so while the microscope I have is excellent and probably will last me the end of my career, there are new microscopes being adapted for our use, which certainly I am learning about and wondering when I need to make a new investment in a new microscope. But I’m assuming that as we’ve adapted these microscopes from other biological research and so as hospital and medical research changes so will the microscopy techniques that we might be using. So I see that we’ll constantly be adapting to the changes and improvements in technology and also realizing what more we can learn from these same tiny samples.

[NR] That’s really interesting. And I think it’s interesting about the digital piece too and how that sort of opened this up and the changes that that’s made. Just curious, I know that conservation and the work that you do is pretty wide and there’s a lot of detail associated with it. But for people who are working with a historic resource who want to learn more about the paint associated with their place or someone who might be working with a historic resource who wants to make sure that they are taking good care of it, are there any things that you see as best practices from the conservation side or the big things to avoid? The things that just provide you endless amounts of pain when you see them?

[SB] Well, I would say that the sample should be tiny. It gives me great pain when I see gauges taken out of woodwork for samples when you only need a tiny bit of material taken from a corner. And I think more people are starting to adapt because they realize the technology allows you to just learn so much from small samples. But believe it or not, my work is not so esoteric because there’s an international group of us. We call it Architectural Paint Research, or APR, and we meet every three years in different countries and there are publications that come out of our conferences. So these books provide a lot of information about what’s happening in the field and it’s an opportunity to share techniques and finding and so there are people in this country working on architectural paint research (APR) and in a whole range of other countries. And most of the people I know in this field belong to the A.I.C., which is the conservator’s group, called the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Work. So, there’s actually a resource on the A.I.C. website for people who do analysis work and who also work in the Architectural Specialty Group. And so, this is a wonderful resource that both states our code of ethics and our standard of practice, but also shows what people are doing in the field and it allows us to share information very readily. And I think that’s the crux of what we’re all doing is that we accept that we’ll always be learning more. So this information should be shared now so people can use this as a base for improvement.

[NR] Yeah. And so, that’s a good resource to find more information on people like you or, perhaps, to find you. And I guess, more particularly, if someone did want to get in touch with you or they have a project that they’d like to hire you for, how do they find Dr. Susan Buck?

[SB] I tend to keep it a low profile because I, generally, have so many projects that I’m juggling that it’s hard to take on new projects. But I have a Facebook page where I post some of my analysis results and I also post microscope pictures on Instagram [@paintchipanalysis]. So both are available for perusal and I think the A.I.C. website is probably the best way to contact any conservator out there working in any field in this country. And these groups that we belong to, the Architectural Specialty Group, Objects Group, Paintings Group, each area of conservation is represented by people in different, special professional skills and also geographically. So that’s probably the best resource.

[NR] Perfect. And I think architectural paint analysis has certainly come of age when it’s on Instagram. I think it’s official [laughter].

[SB] Well, it’s partly my art gallery for my images [laughter].

[NR] Yeah. No, I love that. And they really are – I mean, I think people listening really should go take a look at this because they really are, in addition to being important reminders and resources for study, they’re actually just really beautiful, too.

[SB] Can I just say, I do actually have an exhibit of my images as art, right now, at Wilton House Museum in Richmond, which is only up until the end of this month. But they are displayed on the paneling as framed art with explanations of what they mean. And they can be seen as abstract art and they can be seen as informative technical studies.

[NR] Very cool. I didn’t realize that. That is awesome and definitely worth the trip to Richmond to see both the house and that exhibit. So speaking of houses, bringing us to our conclusion here… The most difficult question we ask anyone who works in the field, which is, what is your favorite historic place or building?

[SB] Honestly, this is a very hard question [laughter]. And I will have to tell you that there are two favorites and for very different reasons.

[NR] Okay. We’ll take it.

[SB] Okay. One is the Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston, South Carolina, which is my dissertation site. And it is an extraordinary building that survives with virtually all its finishes and wallpapers and the evidence of changes over time, both on the main building and in the outbuilding. So these spaces in the outbuildings were lived and worked in by enslaved people and they have brilliantly colored early finishes, and some decorative finishes, and delicate paints. And the pigments out in the outbuildings actually relate to those in some areas of the house. So they’re clearly connections between the two but they’re applied and used in very different ways. So I think this is just the most amazing survivor. And for me, it’s just a treasure trove of physical information.

[NR] Yeah. And we actually did a podcast on Aiken-Rhett and talked about some of the cool things that they’ve done with HVAC there and how they balanced the need for that with the need to maintain that space. So, pretty interesting.

[SB] It is such an important and such a vulnerable site for many reasons. And then my second site, I’d have to say, Monticello. Because you would think that this building has been studied and no more can be learned about it by all the generations of people who have been looking at it but we keep discovering more evidence about the choices Jefferson made for wallpapers and paints in his house, for how he hung his curtains, for how spaces flowed from one to another in terms of color and decorative treatment, and also for the comparison of the treatments of the interiors of chambers for enslaved people and workspaces. It is one of those fascinating buildings and sites where the information just is being slowly revealed over time after asking different questions about the site and about the supporting buildings.

[NR] So Aiken-Rhett and Monticello. Two fantastic answers and this has been a fantastic interview. Susan, thank you for joining us today and thank you for all the good work that you’re doing. You really are changing the perception people have of historic places and that’s a hard thing to do. And it seems like you do it with tremendous ease. And we are very pleased to have you and thank you for all the good work you’re doing out there.

[SB] Well, thank you for allowing me to talk about my favorite subject.

Credits

You don’t need to open a history book to find us and available online from iTunes and their Google Play Store as well as our website: PresMD.org. This is PreserveCast.

This podcast was developed under a grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, a unit of the National Park Service. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Preservation Maryland and the Maryland Milestones Heritage Area and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Park Service or the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.

This week’s episode was produced and engineered by Ben and Stephen Israel. Our executive producer is Aaron Marcavitch. Our theme music is performed by the band Pretty Gritty. You can learn more about them at their website: PrettyGrittyMusic.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter @PG_PrettyGritty.