“For most of us, the sheer tactile pleasure of running one’s fingers through wet, viscous paint is primarily experienced in young childhood,” senior curator Stacy C. Hollander writes in her introduction to “Surface Attraction: Painted Furniture from The Collection of The American Folk Art Museum.”

An invitation to revel in the sensual qualities of paint – its color, texture and pattern – as well as to ponder in a more cerebral way the skill required to mix and creatively apply the medium, motivates the show at the midtown Manhattan museum through March 26.

“I’ve become very interested in the materiality of art making,” explains Hollander, who a year ago presented “Blue,” an innovative look at one color in all its symbolic, cultural and material dimensions.

“In ‘Surface Attraction,’ I wanted people to respond to painted furniture in a new way, to forget about form and construction for a moment and to look at surface as they might study a painting,” she says, recalling the show’s conception.

As a result, “Surface Attraction” is not so much a comprehensive, chronological survey of regional types as an extravagant feast for the eyes. Each one of the roughly 30 blanket chests, chests of drawers, tables, chairs, clocks and boxes from the museum’s growing collection is a gem.

“We have a truly excellent collection of painted furniture that has been primarily built through the gifts of a few prominent collectors over the past quarter century,” says the curator, citing Howard and Jean Lipman, Cyril Nelson, the Historical Society of Early American Decoration and Ralph Esmerian as key sources.

Child’s blanket chest, artist unidentified, probably New York State, circa 1830. Paint on pine with iron hardware. Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian.

Some of the pieces on view have seldom, if ever, beenexhibited. One, the earliest item in the show, is a circa 1690-1720chest-over-drawer, the gift of the Historical Society of EarlyAmerican Decoration. From the Guilford-Saybrook area onConnecticut’s south-central coast, this remarkable survivor isdecorated in an overall floral pattern reminiscent of Englishtextiles of the same era. Surprisingly, an elongated portrait of aman appears on its lower drawer.

Armchair with view of Ithaca Falls, chairmaker unidentified, decoration probably by R.H. Ranney, dates unknown, Ithaca, N.Y., circa 1817-1825. Paint, bronze powder stenciling and gold leaf on wood with rush seat. Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian.

“Surface Attraction” illustrates an assortment ofonce-fashionable paint treatments, from graining, veining,marbling, vinegar painting, shelling, seaweed painting and mottlingto sponging, stippling, scumbling and smoke graining. Along theway, visitors learn about the badger-hair brushes, sponges,leather, quills, sticks, feathers, putty, chamois and combs used toachieve these special effects.

The exhibition is also entertainingly educational on the composition of paint, transparent, opaque or metallic. For much of the period under consideration, linseed oil was the most common medium used to produce opaque paint and transparent oil varnishes. In the Eighteenth Century, decorators were limited to just over three dozen colors, many of them imported. With the industrial revolution came chemical and manufacturing advances. Collapsible metal tubes were not introduced until 1841, ready-made paints not until after the Civil War, meaning that most artists mixed their own paints each day and had to be highly skilled to do so.

“Surface Attraction” is strikingly presented in a single, narrow gallery on the museum’s third floor. As part of Hollander’s strategy to direct attention to the paint itself, blanket chests and chairs are suspended on the walls at eye level. An outsized magnifying glass is held up to a circa 1825-40 New England chest-over-drawers, inviting visitors to more closely inspect its surface, a virtuoso exercise in combing, scumbling, dry-brush and vinegar painting.

At the far end of the room is the ultimate example of schoolgirl art: a table lavishly painted around 1841 with musical motifs, baskets of fruit, shells, wreaths of flowers, leaves and pastoral landscapes by Sarah D. Kellogg of Amherst, Mass. The table’s pillar and scroll base sits on a low pedestal. Hung on the wall above as if it were a Severin Roesen still life, its graceful oval top is a compelling sight, even from a distance.

A view of “Surface Attraction” from the show’s entrance. In the foreground at right, a Maine blanket chest-on-chest on drawers, circa 1830-40, and a Maine drop leaf table of the same date, painted to imitate black rosewood. Left are artist’s tools and manuals, including a rare 1812 pamphlet on loan from Columbia University and The Decorative Painters’ and Glaziers’ Guide of 1827, borrowed from the Smithsonian. -Gavin Ashworth photo

“Surface Attraction” begins with a visual pun,a door decorated by William J. Bell of Indiana in 1873. Beyond thissymbolic entrance visitors encounter a document whose mere survivalseems extraordinary: a sample box discovered in the Dublin, N.H.,home of Moses Eaton Jr (1796-1830), a painter known for hisstenciled wall decorations. The box contains ten panels. Nine aregrain-painted in different styles, the tenth is coated with thesolid, yellow ochre used as ground in the other nine. Having beenprotected from sunlight and wear, the panels, as brilliant as theday they were made, suggest the startling boldness of earlyNineteenth Century taste and the degree to which imaginativedesign, or Fancy, was prized.

“I wanted people to see that the plain, unpainted panel was the basis for all the fantastic imagery implanted on top,” says Hollander, who used photo blowups of the decorated panels as a leitmotif throughout the exhibition.

The first furniture vignette, “Identity in Paint,” suggests the immigrant origins of paint decoration with three American blanket chests inspired by German, Dutch and English prototypes. One, a 1792 chest of Hudson Valley, N.Y., origin, has big, ball feet and a sophisticated grisaille design in the Dutch manner of pendant fruit, drapery swags and architectural motifs.

More outstanding still is a 1778 dower chest attributed to Johannes Kniskern. The subject of a study in the fall 2005 issue of Folk Art, the magazine of the American Folk Art Museum, the chest is from a small group of Schoharie County, N.Y., examples that are strongly Germanic in their ornamentation. The chest’s molded panels, a throwback to Renaissance design, are painted in a vibrant checkerboard pattern.

Deciding what not to include in “Surface Attraction” was one of the challenges of this relatively small show. Hollander pulled five pieces off the floor during installation when she found she simply did not have space for them.

Chest of drawers, probably Johannes Mayer (1794-1883), Mahantango or Schwaben Creek Valley, Northumberland and Schuylkill Counties, Penn., 1830. Paint on pine and poplar; 47 1/2 by 43 3/8 by 22 inches.

“It was more important that we gave the pieces we did showbreathing room,” she recalls. Thus, Pennsylvania, Maryland and theSouth are sparsely represented by a few handsome pieces. An 1801tall case clock by Johannes Spitler is something of a Rosetta stoneamong Shenandoah County, Va., furniture. Until its discovery, theartist who signed his painted furniture “j.SP” was unidentified.The clock provided Spitler’s full name and established a directconnection between the motifs that appear both on the furniture andin the fraktur of Jacob Strickler, for whom the clock was made.

Displayed in a section called “Individuality in Paint,” the Spitler tall clock is shown alongside two unusual boxes by George Robert Lawton (1813-1885), an artist who worked in Scituate, R.I., a southern New England community not particularly well known for paint decoration. At least 16 pieces have been attributed to Lawton. They were earlier thought to have been made by John Colvin, another Rhode Island craftsman related to Lawton by marriage.

From books such as Rufus Porter’s 1825 A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments, a second edition of which is in the museum’s Shirley K. Schlafer Library, artists learned how to make paint and apply it. A small showcase displaying artist’s manuals contains the only two pieces in “Surface Attraction” that were borrowed from other institutions. One is Hezekiah Reynold’s 1812 pamphlet, the first American manual of paint technology not based on English sources. From Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, it is one of only two copies known to the curator. The other loan, from the Smithsonian Institution, is Nathaniel N. Whitlock’s The Decorative Painters’ and Glaziers’ Guide of 1827, a compendium of decorative technique.

“Surface Attraction” includes a handful of portraits on paper and canvas, a reminder that artists moved easily between disciplines in the early Nineteenth Century. “Betsey Dowst,” a watercolor on paper portrait by Joseph H. Davis, confirms the artist’s talent for rendering period interiors, particularly painted furniture. Likewise, decorative motifs found on furniture find their way into three primitive watercolor on paper portraits of the Carver family by the so-called Carver Limner of Freeport, Maine.

As a counterpoint to “Surface Attraction,” the museum is exhibiting “Obsessive Drawing.” The 40 contemporary works, many of them pen or pencil on paper, have a cool, calligraphic quality that contrasts nicely with the bold, saturated colors of the furniture one flight above. Beyond the superficial differences, however, Hollander sees in both shows a heightened awareness of patterning and line.

“We like to pair exhibitions that resonate with one another. Our aim is to present new ways of looking at American folk art that are less predictable and more relevant,” the curator explains. She recently had the satisfaction of showing a Maine blanket chest of drawers in “Surface Attraction” to a professional silkscreen artist. He found the case’s knotted and burled appearance, achieved entirely through sponging and freehand penciling, “a revelation.”

For those who cannot get enough of painted furniture, more is included in “Folk Art Revealed,” a new installation, continuously on view, of the museum’s permanent collection.

The American Folk Art Museum is at 45 West 53 Street. For information, or 212-265-1040.

Members of the Carver family by the Carver Limner, Freeport, Maine, circa 1835. Watercolor and pencil on paper. This intriguing portrait, from a family group, incorporates designs and surface techniques associated with furniture embellishment. Promised gift of Ralph Esmerian.