The Osborn Cannonball House Museum 1840 East Front Street in Scotch Plains, NJ will be open on Sunday, December 6, 2014 from 2-4pm.

Featured is our Victorian Christmas tree and 1800’s winter clothing display.

This will be the last open house of the Museum for 2016.  It will be closed for the winter and reopen the first Sunday in March 2016.

The Osborn Cannonball House Museum, located at 1840 Front Street, Scotch Plains, NJ 07076, will be open on Saturday Oct 17^th 2014 from 10-5pm and Sunday , October 19, 2012 from 2-4pm as part of the annual Union County Four Centuries in a weekend historic sites tour.

We will be featuring a display of original period clothing of the Civil War. Costumed guides will conduct tours.

Pictured left to right: David Bierman – President, Darlene Palombo – Assistant clothing curator, Florence Clark – docent, George Pierson – genealogist, and Renate Maroney – clothing curator

Check out the other sites and get a guide at the Union County site.

The Museum is also open the first sunday of each month from 2-4 pm. Hope to see you there!

The portraits of Aaron Miller Osborn (1790-1827) and his wife Harriet Manning Osborn (1791-1829) were donated to the Historical Society of Scotch Plains and Fanwood by a direct descendent, Professor Bradner W. Coursen.  The donation dictated the portraits be hung in the small Osborn-Cannonball Museum which the Society manages.  The Museum is the home that Jonathon Osborn, Aaron’s grandfather, built in the mid 1700’s.  The portraits were attributed to the now wel

l-known New Jersey itinerant artist Micah Williams (1782-1837).  These portraits were further unusual in that Williams painted them in oils, not his typical pastels, making them further special and valuable.  Both portraits were in need of conservation, which was done by nationally known Paintings Conservator (Dr.) Joyce Hill Stoner at the Winterthur/UD studio.  Indeed she made them “good as old.”

Tru Vue Optium Acrylic glazing is the ultimate glazing product!  With its anti-reflective nature, its filtering out of harmful UV wavelengths, its reduction of glare, its anti-static quality and its abrasion resistant quality, it is no wonder it is used by 75% of museums worldwide.

Tru Vue is also generous.  It teams with the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works to offer two awards per year known as FAIC grants.  One of these grants enabled the small Historical Society of Scotch Plains and Fanwood to protect donated and valuable historic portraits.

After painting conservation, a second serious conservation problem emerged:  providing the proper climate for the portraits in the historic museum that does not have any air conditioning.  The humidity fluctuates wildly, which would be very deleterious to the portraits.  Research yielded the answer of microclimate boxes, which totally enclose an artwork and provide a constant protected climate.  The Tru Vue Optium  Conservation Grant provided the museum quality glass and the funding to have the portraits framed at the Conservation Center for Arts and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, PA.

These magnificent Osborn portraits by Micah Williams now hang in the Osborn Cannonball Museum totally protected.  Many for generations will enjoy them.  The museum is open the first Sunday of every month and by appointment.  Please come to see these incredible portraits conserved to their former glory and now protected in sealed packages.  Many thanks are owed to Tru Vue and to the NJ Historical Commission for their grants which made this project possible for a small, all volunteer Historical Society.