I come before you today to blow the whistle on a ubiquitous and pernicious aesthetic phenomenon in Vermont. Something that hides in plain sight, as omnipresent as an invasive plant species, offering conclusive proof that civilization itself is in the toilet swirl.
I refer, of course, to fake muntins.
Now, to understand what’s so awful about fake muntins you have to know what REAL muntins are.
Everybody wants lots of natural light in their home. But, back in the days when Ethan Allen was fighting to keep Vermont from becoming part of New York, we hadn’t developed the technology yet to create really big pieces of glass. So, your stately home of the 18th Century had big windows made of small rectangular pieces of glass – stitched together in dignified rows by wooden framing pieces called muntins.
Today, glass comes in vast sheets when we need it. Think, for example, of the big panes at the new and award-winning Pizzigalli Center for Art and Education at the Shelburne Museum.
How ironic that an institution dedicated to traditional folk and decorative art would embrace something so contemporary, while almost everyone else in Vermont takes big panes of glass and attempts to make them look old-fashioned by slapping a layer of pretend muntins on them.
They’re usually made of plastic, sometimes they're made of wood – and they are EVERYWHERE, from Cumberland Farms convenience stores to Vermont Law School. The other day I took a trip on Route 5 and spied fake muntins on the optician’s, a pizza shop, a funeral home AND my beloved, local independent bookstore. Even King Arthur Flour, which has a fabulous new building, sports a few of them. I'll bet you can even see some from wherever you are sitting right this minute. I certainly can.
What’s wrong with this picture? Vermont has become far to inured to fakery at every level. And whether the topic is climate change, or healthcare, or economic inequality, or the way our buildings look, we deserve better than what the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable called “nostalgia for what never was.”
Our forbears would have loved giant windows of uninterrupted, energy-efficient glass if only they’d had the technology to create them. We HAVE those big windows. So let’s yank out those fake muntins and let the sun shine in.
