Title: Curator of Customer Experience & Historic Preservation Consultant
Certifications: In addition to a BFA in Art History from Savannah College of Art and Design, Jennifer also studied interior design at Drake University. She is trained in grant writing and digital archiving. She has also been featured twice on PBS for her work on SCAD’s rehabilitation of historic Ivy Hall.
Summary: With her wide range of expertise, Jennifer Johnston can easily be considered a Jill of All Trades. As Curator of Customer Experience at Silent Rivers, she is in charge of our sales and warranty departments, and handles customer outreach. As if that wasn’t enough, she is also consults as our expert on historic preservation, which is a core service Silent Rivers provides.
Affiliations:- Des Moines Art Center member
- Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden member
- Atlanta History Center where she created period costumes
- Sherman Hill historic tour docent
- American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works
- Georgia Preservation Consortium, founding member
Experience: Jennifer is a master finisher with over 25 years of historic preservation experience. She is one of the few remaining craftspeople to be brought up through the apprentice system, starting when she was still a teenager. Over the years, she has worked on numerous historic homes and antiques, specializing in both historic finishes on wooden artifacts and the replication of historic finishes on new woodwork. She ran a historic preservation company called The Woods Conservation in Atlanta, Georgia for ten years. Her business served private homes, businesses, collectors, museums and institutions in the areas of wood finishing conservation, historic documentation, condition surveys, maintenance and color matching. Prior to that, Jennifer was the Director of Interior Finishes at Ivy Hall in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jennifer leading her team in the preservation of this stunning wood medallion in historic Ivy Hall at Savannah College of Art and Design.
I’m consistently inspired by the intersection of green design and historic preservation. Having a home built in decades past doesn’t mean giving up modern technologies. The greenest house is the one already built.”
More About Jennifer Johnston: Jennifer grew up in Des Moines and has also spent about half her life in Georgia. (It’s entertaining how easily she can don a southern accent when the occasion arises.) Her hobbies are as diverse and well rounded as her career including a mix of sewing, stained glass, trivia, traveling, gardening and painting portraits and still lifes. And no surprise, Jennifer also enjoys antique hunting and restoration. You can imagine how adept she is at DIY projects around the historically significant home she and Andrew own in Urbandale.