By Stephen Mills
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EAST MONTPELIER — The old Ceres statue will have a second life after sitting atop the golden dome at the State House for the past 80 years.
Efforts have continued for a year to salvage the water-logged statue and eventually put it on display at the Vermont Historical Society Museum in Montpelier, hopefully by summer. The head of the old Ceres statue is already on display in the museum while the body continues to dry out.
It will be the final chapter – for now – of the storied history of statues atop the State House.
It began with the original 1858 statue, named Agriculture, designed by Brattleboro native Larkin Mead and carved by fellow Brattleboro native Johann Henkel.
It lasted 80 years before wood rot required a replacement, provided in 1938 by Sergeant-at-Arms Dwight Dwinell, who carved the head while two other state employees carved the body of what was regarded as a folk-art piece, compared to the original. Dwinell named the second statue Ceres, after the Roman goddess of agriculture.
After another 80 years, it, too, rotted, and last year state officials decided to order another statue that was part of a $2 million restoration project to reseal the State House’s copper dome, re-gild the dome with 24-carat gold leaf and repaint the rotunda.
Enter Calais woodworker Chris Miller to carve a new statue out of Honduran mahogany based on a clay model by Jerry Williams of Barre Sculpture Studios. The mahogany is disease and water-resistant, and with careful maintenance is expected to long outlast its pine predecessors. The new statue was renamed Agriculture, after the original statue.
On Monday, state officials gathered at Fontaine Sawmill in East Montpelier, owned by Marc Fontaine, to cut nearly three feet off the base of the old statue in preparation for its installation at the Vermont Historical Society Museum. The officials explained it was necessary to cut the 14½-foot statue down to size so that it would fit under the museum’s 12-foot high ceilings.
A second, diagonal cut was made through the lower half of the statue, to allow the two halves to be separated so that museum visitors can see the interior construction which consists of laminated boards that were nailed and screwed together. The two halves will be mounted in a metal armature with a gap in between to see the interior of the statue.
Fontaine said he was approached by project manager Kevin White to see if the sawmill could handle the wood cuts needed for the statue.
“He contacted me about cutting it, and I said it was a big undertaking,” Fontaine said. “Originally, they thought that we could do it on my sawmill, but it was too big for my sawmill. So, we had to get different tools to do it, and it’s exciting to do and be part of the history of the statue.”
Bill Royce, of Royce Construction in East Montpelier, was the one wielding a chain saw to make the cuts to the statue on Monday.
Royce said he and Fontaine did some research on what tools to use and settled on a long chainsaw with a carbide-tipped chain and special bar. They used a Haddon Lumbermaker, that attaches to the chainsaw, and acts as a guide for the chainsaw and keeps the cut straight and plumb and they also used a laser to set the line of the cut.
Part of the project included Adam Krakowski, conservation project manager, who works for Meeting House Furniture Restoration in Quechee, a firm that specializes in woodworking, repairs and restoration.
Krakowski said a close inspection of the statue revealed pockets of moisture throughout the interior the statue that had caused considerable wood rot.
“When I saw it the day after it was taken off the State House, it was literally fully saturated, to the point that there were still ice pockets and ice crystals on the bottom of the statue,” Krakowsi said.
Krakowski said the statue weighed more than 1,000 pounds above the normal density of the Ponderosa pine used in its construction because of the water saturation.
Krakowski said the statue had to be dried out slowly to prevent the laminated boards curling and would include the use of a specially built industrial dehumidifier to control the drying-out process.
David Schutz, curator of state buildings, said the study of the statue revealed that it had continued to suffer wood rot, despite a 2000 renovation that included the use of a “breathable coating” to refinish the statue.
“Not so, it seems, and it makes me very skeptical about any coating that claims to be breathable, because that was supposed to be its principal virtue,” he said. “So, that definitely held in the moisture, but I would submit that the statue has been holding in the moisture since the 1930s.”
Schutz said it would probably not be until the summer before the statue was dry enough to place in the Vermont Historical Society Museum.
“It really depends on how the moisture content goes,” Schutz said. “We’re probably waiting for a few months before it’s dry enough. The head (of the statue) is already there and our hope is to put it the statue in the museum as soon it’s ready.”
Schutz noted that looking at the old statue helped “inform” the design of the new statue, mounting in on a hollow armature up more than half its length to allow air to circulate so that the wood could “breathe” to prevent moisture collection and wood rot.
“This failure showed us that a solid statue was not the way to go, that it would have to continually be drying instead of taking on moisture,” Schutz said.
Also on hand was Stephen Perkins, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society, who said he was looking forward to staging the statue in the Montpelier museum. Having the head of the statue in recent weeks had also been a big draw for visitors, he added.
“We also reinstalled the room,” Perkins said. “It’s called the Snelling Room and we filled it with 19th century art and we redid the floors and repainted the wall… which really transformed that room.”
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