Jim Maus Artifacts - Vinegar Painting

Vinegar Painting

Germanic Furniture Decorating

When the German emigrants started coming into southeastern Pennsylvania in the latter part of the seventeenth century, they brought with them a furniture decorating technique that was used in the Old World for hundreds of years – Vinegar Painting.

These people, who are today misnamed Pennsylvania Dutch (which is an English corruption of the German word Deutsch), made many styles of furniture that was paint decorated using natural colors such as burnt sienna and raw umber and much of it was made to simulate walnut and elm and maple burl woods. They also painted Old World motifs such as hearts, tulips, doves and unicorns on the furniture and today we do not fully understand the exact meanings of these symbols. Until around 1825 these people made massive quantities of painted furniture of which little has survived due to the penchant of antique furniture collectors in the first half of the twentieth century wanting to see the actual wood underneath the paint. Thus thousands of chests, cabinets and chairs had these unique surface colors stripped or sanded away. In this article we will examine how the German-Americans accomplished this beautiful fantasy finish.

Vinegar painting, as the name implies, uses vinegar as the liquid color carrier. In contemporary versions of this technique, we do not have to go into the wild and procure the natural stone, plant and clay coloring pigments. Instead we simply need to buy dry mixed the colors as needed. You can go to a wood working or paint supply specialty store and pay around eighteen to twenty dollars for a four ounce bottle of the color you want or you can go to a chain art supply house such as Michaels or A. C. Moore and purchase a sixteen ounce jar of tempera powder for about five to seven dollars. The difference in the two sources is that the specialty store will have the exact color you may want, such as raw umber or burnt sienna, while the art supply houses will only sell such generic colors as brown or yellow or red dry pigments. But how many of us really need to differentiate between raw umber and burnt sienna – they are both brown.

To begin vinegar painting, you will need a project, usually wood, such as a small box that has been sanded and primed. The project will need to be color coated, normally in a light color such as off-white or pale yellow, and fine sanded after drying. The sanding will increase the ability of the acidic vinegar paint to adhere to the surface. You can use a latex or solvent based semi-gloss paint but make sure the coats are completely dry before proceeding to the next step. To mix the vinegar paint, place some dry tempera powder in a small container. This is not rocket science so you do not have to be exact in your measurements. I normally use a teaspoon to approximately measure the amount of pigment needed or desired for a given project. To the dry pigment add a squirt or two of liquid dish detergent (as an emulsifier), a little pancake syrup or molasses (as an adhesive) and enough vinegar to make a thick liquid paint. Stir well. Stir well and then stir well. If the mixture is too thick, add more vinegar and if it too thin, add more tempera powder. Some trial and error will be necessary to judge just the correct consistency for the paint. You can alter the colors of tempera by adding two or more colors together. Some white or yellow added to brown will make a raw sienna or yellow ochre color. Adding some red to the brown will make a color similar to burnt sienna or burnt umber, depending on the amount of red and brown you use. Other natural colors used by the German artisans include raw umber, cobalt blue, cadmium red and carbon black. All these colors can be mixed by you. Experiment with the colors on a sample board until you get the shade you want. Now you are ready to vinegar paint.

Vinegar painting is a negative painting technique meaning you will apply the color mixture and then remove some or most of it in decorative patterns. To begin, using an old brush, vigorously scrub a coating of the vinegar paint mixture to a horizontal surface of your project and then start removing the paint. One of the most frequently used techniques, today, is to take a piece of plastic food wrap and make a loose ball and begin dabbing the painted surface of your project. Oh by the way, you may want to wear plastic gloves because this can get messy. As you dab and remove the vinegar paint, twist and turn your hand so as to vary the way the paint is being removed. If you are familiar with natural burl woods, you will quickly realize that you are now mimicking this twisted wood grain. Other techniques that can be used include pressing fingers or paint brushes into the wet paint, using sea sponges and/or plumbers putty as paint removal tools or, as the early Germans supposedly did, removing the paint by rolling it with dampened corn cobs (though this particular technique has not worked successfully for me - maybe they had different corn cobs two hundred years ago). Your paint removal tools and techniques are as varied as your own mind can make them. There are no set rules here. Make sure you have a supply of paper towels or rags handy to clean your tool as it gets coated with the vinegar paint mixture. To completely clean you hands or tools, simply use soap and water.

You are attempting to accomplish an implied texture in the vinegar paint coated surface and you can vary this texture in any form that you desire. If you are not happy with the work you have done, simply clean the surface with a vinegar soaked paper towel or rag and start over again with the colored vinegar paint mixture. The paint will dry fast so you will need to work quickly (the hotter the ambient temperature, the quicker the medium will dry). If your paint begins to dry before you finish your negative paint removal, brush some more vinegar paint onto the surface. At this point, you can do no wrong since everything is reversible by recoating or removing the vinegar paint. Experiment and have fun. Fun is what this is all about. After you complete and are happy with your project surface, wait for the paint to dry and turn your work piece so another side is horizontal and begin again. This may seem slow but it is not. Again the vinegar paint will dry quickly. But the surfaces you have textured are not stable enough to be roughly handled at this point, so carefully and lightly touch them as you move the project to gain more horizontal surfaces. If you disturb a completed surface with your fingers or hands, simply add a little more vinegar paint to the affected area and texture it again. As you practice this painting technique, you will learn how to perform the paint removal on vertical surfaces and even on rounded surfaces but it will take some experience to acquire this ability. After you complete and are happy with your project, allow it to dry a minimum of twenty-four hours and then lightly coat all the surfaces with an oil based varnish. Do not use a water based varnish as this will most likely remove your vinegar paint as you brush on the varnish. One or two more coats of varnish will complete the project. You can use shellac as your second and third coats for quicker finish drying, with the understanding that this is not as hard a finish as varnish. Simple is it not. There are, of course, many more complicated techniques that can be used in vinegar painting such as using narrow pin striping tape to mask off certain areas, using more than one color on a given project surface or simulating tiger maple with the edge of a piece of cardboard. If you have an interest in these techniques, contact me or purchase one of the books shown at the end of this article. I wish some of these books had been available when I learned the techniques through trial and error. Now get some dry pigment and put on your gloves and enjoy the artistic challenge of this method of Germanic folk art furniture decorating – Vinegar Painting.