
Colburn House
About This Tour
This unsigned bridal chamber is attributed to well-known father and son stencilers, Moses Eaton, Sr. and Moses Eaton, Jr. To see how these designs were created, compare the painted motifs on the walls to the stencils found in Moses Eaton, Jr.’s toolbox.

This New Hampshire cape has multiple additions. The stenciled room is found in a second-floor addition and was likely decorated for a newly married son.
The Colburn House
The Colburn House, also known as the Coburn-Weston House, was built in 1781 by Elias Colburn in Temple, New Hampshire. This cape farmhouse has clearly undergone multiple additions to attach sheds, connect the barn, and add a garage. Temple is home to other painted walls, including a very similarly stenciled wall in the Zedekiah Drury House.
In the fall of 1830, Elias’s son Nathan Colburn (ca. 1802-82) married Jane Parker of Cambridge, Massachusetts (ca. 1808-86). It is suspected that this bridal chamber was decorated in celebration of their marriage. Jane’s portrait is also displayed above the bed. These stencils have been well-preserved and are of excellent quality.
The town of Temple is not far away from Hancock, New Hampshire, home of the Eaton family. Moses Eaton, Sr. (1753-1833) and Moses Eaton, Jr. (1796-1886) were active stencilers in New Hampshire and Maine and are well known for their work. In the early twentieth century, Eaton researcher and author of Early American Wall Stencils, Janet Waring, was given Moses Eaton Jr.’s stencil kit after it was found by his descendants in his Harrisville, New Hampshire home. This discovery allows scholars today to compare the designs on walls with the ones from his kit to formulate an attribution. The stencils now reside in the collection of Historic New England and can be viewed online.
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The nature of stencil art — an art form that can be copied and replicated with ease — makes it difficult to confirm definitively who painted it without a signature or documentation. It is important to note, however, that all of the stenciled designs found within the Colburn House match the stencils found in Moses Eaton Jr.’s stencil kit. As a result, it is likely that it was one of the Eatons who painted this wall.
About the Artist

This door, which has two heart-shaped cutouts, hints at the decoration in the bridal chamber above.
About the Art
In order to reach the pristine, well-preserved bridal chamber, one must pass through a door with cutout hearts (not seen in the Immersive Tour) and climb the stairs to the attic. The bridal chamber is also decorated aplenty with hearts — a motif typically reserved for this type of room as an allusion to the couple’s bond. The overmantel’s basket of flowers also references their relationship by symbolizing friendship.
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This room deviates a little from the standard layout of folk art stenciling as the artist took the architectural details of the room into account. Instead of one chair rail border, there are two horizontal borders at the molding where the knee wall meets the sloped ceiling. Also notice that the rosebud border is misaligned over the fireplace, so that there is enough space for the special overmantel designs.
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As in most stenciled spaces of this period, the walls are divided into separate “panels.” In this example, circular and leafy fillers were painted between vertical green borders. Also typical of the period is that the frieze border is the most important element in the design.

The stenciled fields on the sloped ceiling of the bridal chamber incorporate hearts between the uprights. The slanted ceiling gives the room a cozy feel, and certainly must have challenged the stenciler.

The end wall incorporates a motif — a band of roses and leaves — usually used in a frieze. In this example, it was used in a horizontal band placed slightly above the height of a typical chair rail.