This Old House Magazine: Open and Shutter Case

So she forwarded two to Wayne Austin, a cabinetmaker and designer associated with DeVenco, a Decatur, Georgia–based maker of historically accurate wood shutters and blinds. Austin, who had fashioned some interior shutters for Tori's house, saw immediately that the samples she sent were exact reproductions of two styles—a solid-panel and a combined solid/louver version—that were popular in the Georgian period. Using these as templates, he created new sets in durable incense cedar for all 15 windows: solid panels for the first floor and combined solid/louvered for the second level.

Today's shutters are primarily ornamental, but initially they were devised to protect window glass from breakage, control light without cutting off fresh air, and create a first line of defense against intruders when securely locked from within. They were also an early form of insulation—particularly in northern regions, where solid panels were used for protection against wind and cold. Primitive shutters were fashioned of boards and battens, while those developed during the Georgian period, which saw a flowering of English styles in this country, featured raised or recessed panels, often decorated with ornamental cutouts. Tori's each have an urn-shaped cutout near the top that mimics the wrought-iron urns at the corners of her portico.

The method of installation depends upon the house's siding material. Before brick veneer came into wide use in the 1850s, masonry houses were made of solid brick, with walls up to 12 inches thick; shutters were mounted on the interior of the house and swung into a pocket called an embrasure, located within the side walls of recessed window frames. By contrast, frame houses wore their shutters on the outside.

"Wayne told me the hinges I'd sent him were hand-forged wrought iron in beautiful condition, so we reused them," Tori says. Recycling them meant that the hinges could slide over existing pintles attached to the window jambs. To install the hinges on the brick would have required jamb repairs and boring into the brick—a needless expense.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, shutters would also have been held in place by a pivoting tieback shaped like a straight or curved rat-tail or paddle, called a shutter dog, that was usually placed at the bottom center of the shutter. "To release the shutter dogs, you'd reach out and turn them sideways," Austin explains.