Open 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, and Monday Holidays.
The Blog of Historic Deerfield
Image: Portrait Miniature of Sarah Hilliard. Attributed to Rufus Porter (1792– 1884) Cambridge, Massachusetts, ca. 1825. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper. Gift of Juliene and Carl M. Lindberg 2023.8.10
This large-scale acquisition includes several components related to Rufus Porter’s career as an artist, inventor, and publisher. A significant portion of the gift comprises close to thirty miniature portraits attributed to Porter and illustrates his entire career as an artist.
Image: Blanket Box (c. 1825) from the workshop of Thomas Matteson. Eastern white pine and paint. Gift of Patricia Passmore Alley and F. William Alley (2023.9.10)
The recent recipient of a generous donation of Vermont furniture and related decorative arts from the collection of William and Patricia Passmore Alley, Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition, Vermont Furniture from the Alley Collection.
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded in 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2024 gathering, Into the Woods: New England Forests in Fact and Imagination, to be held at Historic Deerfield June 28-29, 2024. The seminar invites proposals for papers and presentations that address the rich and varied histories of the relationship between the peoples of New England and adjacent areas and their forests.
Historic Deerfield invites applications from college juniors and seniors to take part in an intensive, nine-week Summer Fellowship Program in History and Material Culture.
Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce two new hires this fall: Erika Gasser, Ph.D., Director of Academic Programs, and Lea Stephenson, Luce Foundation Curatorial Fellow in American Paintings and Works on Paper.
In the March 25, 1899 issue of the Greenfield Gazette & Courier, the following notice appeared:
“The public are very much saddened by the death of Mrs. Mary E. Taft, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Everett. Mrs. Taft has been seriously ill at her father’s house for three weeks and everything that medical science could do has been done for her…
Historic Deerfield hosted a free-admission day on August 9th, in partnership with the Highland Street Foundation. Visitors of all ages came to enjoy lawn games, house tours, handcrafts, demonstrations, and more!
In the winter and early spring months of 1874 and 1876, Martha “Mattie” Ann Sanderson (1854-1933) and her mother, Abby H. Rice Sanderson (1829-1902), kept a journal of their work schedules, domestic cookery, farm production and inventories, sewing projects, daily weather reports, church and prayer meeting attendance and numerous other tasks…
Whitley worked for many years as Senior Curator in the Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and in 2020 received the honorary designation of Senior Curator emerita. While at the MFA, Boston Lauren curated several exhibitions…
On May 20-21, 2023, Historic Deerfield hosted “Wooly Wonders,” a celebration of rare heritage breed sheep, textiles, and wool-processing in New England. Visitors came to see Lincoln Longwool, Shetland, and Merino sheep, as well as demonstrations of sheepdog herding, hand-shearing, spinning on historic wheels, and weaving.
A comparison of two bindings from a recent gift highlights changes in bookbinding technology over seven decades. My previous post showcased a rare colonial binding that featured gilt tooling in a very restrained, elegant design. By the 1840s, advances and changing tastes culminated in exuberant gold stamping in this title, telling a different story…
Historic Deerfield is thrilled to announce the acquisition of a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts furniture constructed by Madeline Yale Wynne (1847-1918), Deerfield’s leading proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Known as Garden of Hearts, the chest, with finely crafted, forged, hammered, carved, and painted elements, was made in 1903 and is an important example of Arts and Crafts furniture by a groundbreaking female artist.
Welcome back! Historic Deerfield will soon reopen to the public in full! Over the long winter, only the Flynt Center of Early New England Life has been open, and only on the weekends. Starting April 15th, Historic Deerfield will be fully open to the public, Wednesday through Sundays and Holiday Mondays.
We are particularly excited to announce…
A recent library donation of rare books included the 22nd edition of “Hymns and Spiritual Songs” published in 1771. It joins six other hymnals written by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), an English Congregational minister and hymn writer (most notably “Joy to the World”), whose many hymnals were reprinted long after his death. Three in our collection boast a western Massachusetts provenance…
The generosity of an anonymous donor has brought the extraordinary gift to the Henry N. Flynt Library of a large and varied group of important rare books. Among them is one of the masterpieces of early European printing: the Liber Chronicarum, or the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1493, less than 50 years after the printing of the landmark Gutenberg Bible.
This is not a blog about pumpkin spice. While today we decorate our yards and front steps with pumpkins and gourds and drink coffee flavored with pumpkin pie spices, long ago the pumpkin and its relatives — winter squashes — were a staple and necessary food item that were stored and eaten over the long and cold New England winters.
The death of a loved one can be sudden and shocking, or the inevitable result of a long decline. Either way, those that remain find themselves tasked with the immediate details of death, such as preparing the body for burial, procuring a coffin, arranging a viewing and/or funeral, finding a burial site, and digging a grave.
Over the past decade, scaleboard bindings have attracted the interest of the book history community. Named because the book covers were made of thin pieces of wood that had been shaved, planed or scaled down to just several millimeters in thickness, this binding style was popular almost exclusively in New England from the early 18th through the early 19th centuries.
In the spring of 2020, I was one of the many people who sought to learn a new skill as a way to pass the long hours at home. My pandemic hobby was darning. When I went online in search of tutorials and videos that would teach me to repair the worn out heels of my old wool socks, I discovered to my surprise that darning was actually in!
Have you experienced the gut-punch when learning something surprising about a good friend? This is sometimes how it feels to study history. We learn the stories and voices of people from the past. Their world becomes less foreign but nevertheless remains impossible to reach. Every so often we find something unexpected.