Museum of Early Trades & Crafts

The Museum of Early Trades and Crafts (METC) is housed in what was once the James Library Building located in Madison, New Jersey. The building was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival architectural style—decorated with seven chandeliers, 56 stained glass windows, and three fireplaces. Unique interior features include literary quotations on the walls, windows, and fireplaces; such as “God be thanked for books, they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages,” which can be found on the fireplace in the south gallery.

EverGreene collaborated with METC for the final phase of their long-term preservation plan, to conserve the finishes and decorative paint on the interior of the building. The brickwork paintings on the walls were originally painted on unglazed brick by A.B Cutter studio in 1900, done in a similar technique to “Tiffany Wall Glazing” used at this time. There were at least five (5) different painting campaigns; the original painting and  four (4) post-historic overpaint campaigns, with the most recent dating from 1996-1997. Our conservators conducted historic treatments of artistic paintings as well as historic masonry restoration in our current stage of the final preservation phase. This included documenting and preparing paint schemes, cleaning painted surfaces, selectively removing inappropriate paint repairs, historical paint consolidation, masonry cleaning and repair, desalination, salt testing, and long term monitoring.