I am constantly amazed at our misuse of resources. Take aluminum, for example. This is a strategic material. We use it in our aircraft to defend America. We also package our beer and soda in it and then bury massive quantities of the empties in dumps. How did this all start? I have a CD from the 1950s with one of the first radio commercials for no deposit no return glass bottles. The announcer is positively ecstatic. No more bothersome returning empties to the store. Just throw ’em in the trash! I think I remember that it somehow felt wrong. It might have been 10 years later that we were told that aluminum cans made the beer taste more like on-tap — at least that was the claim. The fact that aluminum cans were lighter than glass bottles or steel cans, thus reducing shipping costs, was not mentioned so I guess it was not a big deal. Maybe it was. Nobody’s telling.Oil is finite. We use it to keep from freezing to death and we also fuel our aluminum planes with it. We fly those planes all over the country every day so that people can attend meetings, sell stuff and vacation at unnecessary distances. Most of this travel could easily be shortened, rerouted by a more efficient mode of travel or handled by phone or Internet.You might say, “Hey! The plane was already going there. I just rented one of the empty seats. A lot of people’s jobs rely on my traveling and I am just helping to drive/fly the economy. My intentions are the best.” Well, good intentions are still paving that famous road. The truth is that the actual traveler is often not in control of this; it is top management who decides, like the Roman Centurion in the Bible, who shall “cometh” and who shall “goeth,” and how far. We used to have a pretty good rail network that included that forgotten local workhorse, the inter-urban trolley, the big ones that ran on the rails from one large city to another, like from Hartford to Springfield. Stores, amusements and necessary services used to be located in close proximity to the rails. This clustering left much of the countryside open and suitable for farming and wildlife.One day we will wake up and discover that we are almost out of oil. Our steel cars, even with improved highway mileage, will be unable to get fuel sufficient to run any significant distance. What will we do? Well, we could stretch out the fuel economy by making our cars out of aluminum. Oh, wait a minute … Bill Abrams resides, and counts his cans and bottles, in Pine Plains.
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Caleb Von Gardey (kneeling) and Paul Guerino carefully fit the 1844 portrait into a custom-built crate.
Patrick L. Sullivan
The painting shows Maria Coffing in the foreground and, behind her, a young Black woman looking out from a doorway. Both women lived in Salisbury. Maria’s husband, John Churchill Coffing, was an ironmaster; Winslow, known as Jennie, came to live with the Coffings as a child and remained with the family for decades.
The museum selected the portrait for an exhibition on how girls and young Black women were represented in early American art. It aims to draw attention to their often-overlooked lives.
“We are honored by this special opportunity to share Jane Winslow’s representation and her story with our visitors,” said Emelie Gevalt, the museum’s deputy director and chief curatorial and program officer.
The Salisbury Association acquired the portrait in 2012. It was restored by Val Michalski of Egremont, Massachusetts, who had previously restored a companion portrait of John Coffing. It was a difficult task. At the time, Michalski described the painting’s condition as “quite appalling.”
At some point, the painting had been revarnished with a substance that resisted Michalski’s array of solvents.
“I was stymied,” he said. “I had one technique left.”
He used a very small scalpel to physically lift the varnish off. As he painstakingly worked the size 15 scalpel under the layer, “Lo and behold — the varnish just shattered.”
From that point, the process went fairly quickly. He was able to use a bigger scalpel, a size 20.
“You could take a leg off with that one.”
The shattered varnish came off easily, but it left a faint gray haze and a couple of damaged areas that had been touched up with black wax.
Removing the varnish made the young woman in the background easier to see. Michalski called Katherine Chilcoat of the Salisbury Association, who was also Salisbury’s town historian.
Regina Madigan had researched and appraised the painting for the association before the restoration.
“I almost fainted” when she saw the clearer image of the young Black woman, she said.
Madigan said Black people were included in some American portraits of the period, but were usually both thematically and literally apart from the main subject — working in a field in the background, for example.
In this painting, Winslow is physically close to Maria. Michalski described her expression as “very caring but also commanding.”
The association’s research identified her as Jane Elizabeth Winslow. Orphaned at about age 5, Jennie joined the Coffing household around 1830. The 1840 census lists a free Black person in the household whom the association believes was Winslow.
The 1850 and 1860 censuses list her by name. She stayed in the Salisbury house for several years after Maria died in 1865 and later married Egbert Lee.
According to Chilcoat, John Coffing was 37 and a widower with four children when he married Maria Birch, a 30-year-old schoolteacher, in 1813. Coffing made the first move in the courtship with a letter.
“Miss Birch, as the first advance belongs to the part that I am, this is to directly inform you madam that I have it in contemplation to make some pertinent propositions to you,” he wrote.
Maria replied: “I am bound to tell you that my heart is buried with a man who lies I know not where, but if you still wish it, I will marry you, and be a mother to your children to the very best of my ability.”
Getting her portrait to New York began with a slight detour caused by faulty internet directions. There was another delay when the transporters reached the Academy Building and realized they did not have the right wrench.
Regular human directions to Herrington’s hardware store in Lakeville were supplied, and they returned in 15 minutes.
The men carefully lifted the portrait off the wall, placed it on thick plastic sheeting and bundled it up. Outside on Academy Street, a specially built crate lined with black foam awaited.
The painting fit snugly inside.
Von Gardey said the truck’s cargo area is controlled for temperature and humidity. The men strapped in the crate and were on their way to New York by 11 a.m.
The portrait will be part of Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art, which runs from Oct. 9 through Feb. 28.
Caleb Von Gardey (kneeling) and Paul Guerino carefully fit the 1844 portrait into a custom-built crate.Patrick L. Sullivan
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