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| Home > Preservation > Current & Recent Projects > Entablature | |
| Entablature | |
| One of the richest and most advanced stylistically for its time, Christ Church’s fully-developed Ionic entablature had few rivals in colonial Virginia buildings. Massive in size yet elaborate in design, the entablature provides a beautifully-proportioned transition between the church’s exceptionally-high brick walls and towering hipped roof. | |
 A chemical treatment, shown here in green, aids conservators' efforts to remove years of accumulated paint from the entablature |
Preserving the entablature is a delicate process. With its heavy build-up of deteriorated paint, the entablature offers an unsatisfactory surface for a typical “scrape and paint” solution. Instead, conservation requires both chemical and manual removal of all paint down to the bare wood. Once the paint has been removed, any deteriorated wood elements or surfaces are repaired before the section is stabilized with an alkyd resin. After application of a primer, conservators apply the off-white finish coats, a color determined to be the original (overtop a Spanish Brown primer and White Lead primer) by a paint analysis performed on a dentil from the entablature in 1992. |
| Because of its sheer scale, conservation of the entablature will take place in stages. Dividing the work into twelve sections—one for each side of the cruciform building’s four transepts—conservators will treat two sections per year. Work began in late 2002 and will continue through 2007. Total costs for the project are expected to be $133,000. The first sections treated were the east side of the south transept and the adjacent south side of the east transept. The results were impressive, as shown in the photograph to the right. Compare, for example, the bright surface on the east side of the south transept (left of photo) with that on the untreated east side of the north transept. With one segment under their belts, the crew from Tidewater Preservation returned to Christ Church this past October to complete the other two sections (east and north sides) of the east transept. Thus, except for the east side on the north transept, all of the entablature when viewing Christ Church from the east is now complete. |
 October 2003: Conservators from Tidewater Preservation work on section of entablature along east transept |
 Close-up of the completed south side of the east transept |
Next fall, Tidewater Preservation will be back to work on another two sections of the entablature. If you would like more information on this work, please contact the Foundation office at 804.438.6855 or fhcc@crosslink.net. If you would like to make a contribution to support this project, please visit our Giving for Preservation and Special Projects page. |
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