Completed installation and restoration of *Rives de Bosphore*

Camp Manor, located on Lake Ontario, was built by a young 21 year old Elisha Camp over eight years starting in 1807. He was inspired by the James Vanderpoel House he visited in Kinderhook, NY. During the fierce battles on the lake during the War of 1812, construction was briefly halted. Elisha Camp became a business partner of Ulysses S. Grant and had the exclusive license from Robert Fulton to operate his steamships on the Great Lakes.

The Parlor at Camp Manor is one of the most important existing rooms in America with Scenic Wallpaper. Dufour's First Edition Rives du Bosphore was installed shortly after the paper was produced in 1812. There are nearly two complete sets of 25 panels in the Parlor. In addition, the paper was originally installed with a rare Dufour first edition Drapery Border at the ceiling line and a rare Dufour Scenic Dado Wallpaper below the Bosphore to form a chair rail.

In the last 200 years, this parlor has been visited by President James Monroe, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Kings Kamehaha IV and V on their world tour from Hawaii in 1849.

The descendants of the original owners sold Camp Manor in 2021 to new owners that undertook the restoration. One wall of the room was in nearly in pristine condition with vibrant original colors. The room had never been restored and the paper has existed in the same room in the same house since it was originally installed. The team at Scenic Wallpaper is honored to have brought this room back to its former glory.

Scenic Wallpaper was hired to secure and restore the paper, having previously installed another first edition Rives de Bosphore.

The original intention was to leave the paper in place; however, the home had recently been updated to include an HVAC system that heated this room for the first time in its 200 year history. During the first season with the new system, much of the paper became loose from the original plaster. The paper had not been installed on any muslin or liner paper backing.

Our team carefully removed large sections of the room and exposed the original plaster.

The paper was carefully photographed and catalogued. Once the plaster was repaired and primed, the team installed muslin and liner paper to make the process reversible.

Some areas of the room remained tight to the original plaster.

In addition, the house had settled and corners of the room were not aligned. After the plaster was repaired, the paper was reinstalled and the scene was realigned.

Finally, the restoration began. Some areas of the sky were too damaged save, but fortunately we had a similar sky paper that we could substitute and match to the original. Most importantly, none of the original handblocked scenes were lost.

After restoration, the sky painted to match the original paper

Niches on either side of the fireplace were in dire condition and we removed, saved and reinstalled those panels. The sides of the niches nearest the fireplace were covered with sky paper which, although period, was not the same Dufour sky that was in the rest of the room.

This was originally done to resolve the scene above the fireplace which is on a higher plain than the rest of the room. The new owners decided that we should replace those two small areas of sky with new sky that we could in-paint and join the scene together to make it flow seamlessly across without an awkward transition. The in-painting was done in the original style and replicated some of the original landscape.

Originally, there was another panel of sky next to the window which would have been hidden by drapery and where the original paperhanger obviously ran out of paper. We undertook to replace that sky and again join that area to the original.

The Drapery Border and Dado Wallpaper deserve special mention. These panels are not only incredibly rare but also incredibly difficult to restore. Small lines and details had to be replicated. Repetitive parts of the drapery paper had to be replicated. Thousands of small lines and hundreds of repeated shapes were replicated throughout the room, as well as the repeated scenes in the Dado.