Oval Window Repair
Miles Brewton House
Probably the best example of an historic building being artwork left out in the rain is the exterior carving and the pediment window at Miles Brewton, both of which are more than 40' up in the air yet carved more elaborately than Chippendale furniture. The challenge with this sort of inaccessible ornament is that it does not get needed maintenance throughout its life. Instead there tend to be cycles of neglect and painters make most of the decisions about repair, caulking and driving nails through lose pieces until it is in desperate shape.
This oval window is absolutely unique. Its repair required me to stretch my skills and develop some new methods. In order to do justice to the artwork of a long-dead craftsman, you must first learn what he did and why he did it that way. Becoming an apprentice to a master long gone through his art is one of the most interesting aspects of this work. The construction of this window was very clever and the engineering of the wooden beads encircling the window was very subtle. The first few pieces I made broke and I had to go back and learn from what remained of the original. Replicating the original required I make use of what I had long known intellectually about the structure of wood but never applied in this way.
These windows also were a testament to the incredible durability of old-growth cypress. All of these delicate little parts had been out in the weather since the 1770s and remained quite sound in spite of limited maintenance.
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