One of the most prominent and beautiful sights in Montpelier is the gold dome of the Vermont Statehouse. This summer has been a laborious and fascinating process of renovating both the dome and the statue of Ceres, the Goddess of Grain, which stood on the top since it replaced the original in the 1920s. The old wooden statue had significantly deteriorated and had to be removed.

New gold leaf was applied to the dome—it is gorgeous—and the statue is being replaced with a new wood carving that is more accurate to the original and much more weather resistant. It has been so odd to see Ceres missing!

Today I treated myself to visiting the Vermont Granite Museum in Barre where woodcarver Chris Miller is about a month away from finishing the new statue. It is glorious!

Chris was so generous with his time, details about the work and his enthusiasm for the process, a “commission of a lifetime” as he put it.

Installation on the newly gilded dome is scheduled for November 30th, and you can bet I’ll be there with my long lens. Thanks also must be added for the guiding hand of David Schutz, curator of the Statehouse, for his vision and determination in bringing the huge project to reality.

24 Oct This entry was published on October 24, 2018 at 3:01 pm. It’s filed under People, Photograph, Vermont and tagged Barre, Ceres, Chris Miller, gold leaf, Vermont, Vermont Granite Museum, Vermont Statehouse, Wood carver. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.