“Dressing” an 18th Century Mansion for Summer September 11, 2023 Hoag Levins News Chandeliers, gilded picture frames and mirrors were among a wealthy 18th-century family’s most valuable and prestigious possessions. But the gilding process of that era used a glue made from rabbit hide that drew swarms of hungry summer flies. So, families like the lived in Camden, New Jersey’s historic Pomona Hall in the 1770s greeted summer by draping their mirrors, picture frames and chandeliers in an open-weave gauze to protect them from hungry bugs and the corrosive droppings the insects left behind. (Photos: Hoag Levins) Insects were a daily plague for colonial society. People used natural repellents including citronella, the sap of pennyroyal plants, tobacco smoke, and pyrethrum from chrysanthemum flowers to keep them at bay. Glue made from the collagen in rabbit skins was used as a gilding adhesive to apply gold and silver leaf to chandeliers, picture frames, and mirrors. Long before electricity fans and air conditioners, most activities of daily life in colonial mansion move into the spacious center hallway. It’ front and back doors were thrown open to take full advantage of cross ventilation and summer breezes. (The far door originally opened to the outside air. The front door is directly behind the camera.) Dining rooms with their pass-throughs to the open-hearth kitchens were a constant draw for summer insects attracted to the foods. ‘Summer dress’ was a seasonal 18th-century housekeeping practice that also used gauze netting to protect family members throughout the mansion that lacked window screens. The overall ‘summer dress’ practice resulted in dramatic changes in decor all designed to help family members stay cool and comfortable in southern New Jersey’s steamy summer months. Here, in a master bed chamber, the heavy tapestry-like bed curtains of winter have been replaced by airy gauze netting. The main bed chamber was also where mother and grandmother may have tended young children and took their own rare full-body washings in an even rarer metal bathtub that was a further mark of their wealth and status. Mosquito netting protects the cradle, while white sheets line the tub. Aside from the ferocious heat of the open-hearth kitchen where they worked to feed as many as two dozen people daily, the enslaved Africans and indentured servants of were plagued by bugs in the summer. Here, in the kitchen, gauze netting was a crucial tool for keeping hungry insect swarms off the foods. In a colonial New Jersey landscape close to the Delaware River and its networks of creeks and swamps meandering through dense forests, the battle against insects was never-ending. Along with the mosquito and fly netting that so changed the interior of a house, residents also used glass flycatchers baited with sugar water to lure pesky bugs to their death.