Is everyone else out there as infatuated with the musical “Hamilton” as I am? I have a huge project in the works and it ties it all together!

Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler were married at her father’s home in Albany, New York on December 14, 1780. The couple met at the mansion in the fall of 1777. We don’t know much about their initial meeting (the ball, as indicated as their place of meeting in the musical “Hamilton”, actually happened in Morristown, NJ on February 23, 1780) but it seems that they had met a couple of years before that at the Schuyler Mansion. Their wedding took place there too and they stayed there after the wedding until January of 1781.

The project I am working on is a second large floorcloth for the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany. In 2007 I created the floorcloth which now resides in the front hall of the mansion on the first floor. It is blue and white marbleized diamonds with a lozenge design around the border. It is 17.5′ wide by 25.5′ long. Can you picture Alexander and Eliza standing there discussing the matters of the day?

Now I have a whole bunch of canvas prepped for the floorcloth which will live on the second floor in the “salon”. It will be almost 18 feet wide and over 43 feet long! I’ll be using a Carwitham geometric pattern with marbling and sponging to create a granite and marble repeating tile look. John Carwitham’s designs were first published in 1739 and were used extensively for floorcloths as well as inlay floors and pavements. You can read more about them here. This upstairs room was used for “entertainments”, so maybe Alexander and Eliza danced together there… It will take me at least three months to complete this project. After watching the musical “Hamilton” a couple of times I am very inspired to recreate the period on my canvas. The soundtrack will be well played- over and over, so if you hear hip hop as you drive by the studio, you’ll know why!

Painted sample on canvas of “marbling” and “granite”.

My rendering of the floorcloth in the upstairs “salon”.

Read more about the restoration of this historic site at http://schuylermansion.blogspot.com/search/label/restoration.