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100 Years
100 Objects100 Stories
at Fruitlands Museum
Fruitlands MuseumHarvard, Massachusetts
Shaker BoxesShaker Village, Harvard, Massachusetts | c. 1856 | wood, paint, copper nails
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The Fruitlands StoryFruitlands Museum from opening day in 1914 to the present and how our buildings, collections, and mission activities have grown and changed. The second half of the book focuses on the Museum’s collections through 100 objects and stories.
100 Objects, 100 Stories, 100 Years at Fruitlands Museum would not have been possible without the enthusiastic support of hundreds of our community members. I extend my personal thanks to the Fruitlands Museum Board of Trustees who believed in our vision for the Centennial Celebration and supported the plans we developed so quickly after I arrived at Fruitlands in 2012. Thanks also to the members of the Centennial Committee and the staff and project teams who have worked tirelessly on the Centennial exhibition and this publication, our first collections catalogue.
We are indebted to the members of our community who helped us pick their 100 favorite objects from our collection (from more than 6000 total objects across all five areas) and who shared their stories about their connections to these objects. We are grateful for the generosity of the donors who supported our Kickstarter campaign that provided partial funding for this book, as well as those individual and corporate donors who have helped underwrite the Centennial exhibition and the special programming that will take place between June 2014 and June 2015.
As we look forward now to the next 100 years at Fruitlands Museum, we do so with appreciation for the amazing foundation that we have in our strong collections that are the core of what we do and in even deeper appreciation for our community members who are the core of why we do our work. It is truly the community, the people, that bring museum spaces to life, and we are eager to see what wonderful stories we will build together in the years to come.
Thank you for being a part of our Centennial celebration.
— Wyona Lynch-McWhiteExecutive Director
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While travelling in Europe in 1895 with her mother, Sears sat for a portrait with Carolus Duran, the society painter who taught John Singer Sargent. Commenting on the results in her diary for that year, Sears notes, “He painted it in eight sittings + it is absolutely well fin-ished . . . As a likeness of me as seen in society, I think it excellent. Of course he is delighted with it + we are more than delighted, for besides being a likeness it is most beautifully painted” ( June 3, 1895). The whereabouts of the painting are unknown, though a photograph from the same year may be an image of the painting. Sears’ comments in her 1895 European travel journal reveal an intelligent, cosmopolitan observer, one who is aware that she maintains a necessary public persona that is not her complete self. She can also distance herself from the image to judge it for its artistic merits. She is becoming a collector.
It is only in images captured later in the 1940s, as she invites the public to her tea rooms or portrait gallery, that she offers a smile. Her snug collar and strands of pearls are correct but not ostentatious. Hardly the glamor-ous and extravagant pearls of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Sears displays ladylike accessories worn by a woman willing to have the attention aimed at her museum rather than herself. In keeping with the fashion of the day, she sports a generous flower corsage and a jaunty brimmed hat worn at an angle. These are not candid snapshots, even in the years when Kodaks were at hand, but, like the Duran painting, carefully posed portraits of Clara Endicott Sears, the chatelaine of a treasure house of New England history and art. She hosted luncheons to invite visitors to her museums, but otherwise largely preserved her privacy, remained unmarried, limited her intimate friendships, and invested her time in the work she made her mission at Fruitlands.
Her portraits, then, reinforce the impression of Sears as a woman brought up to enjoy unquestioningly the conventional behavior of wealthy Boston society even as she cultivated her curiosity and built her collections. Sears in 1917
and accessories. Ankle-length white dresses are topped with wide-brimmed hats; trim shoes or boots are just visible below the hemline of her skirt. She is upright, no-nonsense, pensive. The most appealing and person-able photograph captures her sitting on the steps out-side The Pergolas on a summer day, with a large dog at her side. Here the viewer catches a fleeting glimpse of an individual rather than a local celebrity.
Another snapshot comes from social historian Cleveland Amory, who interviewed Sears in the 1940s about “Proper Boston” before World War I. Describing such fashionable balls as the invitation-only Myopia Hunt Club gala, where “standard dress was scarlet coats and white knee breeches,” he notes that “Ladies who wore red dresses which would clash with the male scarlet were frowned upon, and accord-ing to Clara Endicott Sears, Boston authoress and her-self belle of many a Boston ball, they generally chose soft-colored tulle and looked ‘like clouds floating through the ballroom’ — certainly the Boston woman at her most ethereal.”4 This backward glance is among the few that reveal a confident, youthful woman at ease among her peers.
Another is her recollection of attending a lecture by Oscar Wilde, who visited Boston in June, 1882. Recalling the details in Snapshots from Old Registers (privately printed in 1955), Sears notes that his reputation as “the poet and apostle of aestheticism” raised Beacon Hill eyebrows for “rumors had come over here that he was not as straitlaced as he should be.” Curious and eager to see this literary lion, Sears attends the lecture and remembers his flamboyant attire, which included velvet knee breeches, rhinestone shoe buckles, a yellow bro-cade waistcoat and “a monstrous great sunflower as big as his head.” Of all that he said, what she records some 70 years later is his remark on the beautiful blue color of the Charles River. The adventurous eighteen-year-old had evolved into a comfortable Transcendentalist.
Photograph similar to the lost Carolus Duran painting
1949
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The Farmhouse1843 Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane
move to Harvard to begin Fruitlands
experiment.
1844 Fruitlands experiment ends.
1847 Joseph Palmer uses the Fruitlands
Farmhouse for his Freelands experiment.
1850 Freelands experiment ends.
1910 Clara Endicott Sears buys land in
Harvard, Massachusetts.
1912 The Pergolas, Sears’ home, is built.
1912 Renovations of Fruitlands Farmhouse
begin.
1914 Fruitlands Museum opens to the public.
1918 Harvard Shaker Village closes.
1920 Sears purchases the 1794 Shaker Office
from Fiske Warren.
1922 Shaker Museum at Fruitlands opens to
the public.
1927 Plans for the American Indian Museum
begin.
1928 American Indian Museum
opens to the public.
Milestones
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Many years later a curator found them this way and
decided to save them.
Thankfully, T. M. Bardin of London and his
family made globes of especially robust materi-
als, and they were completely salvageable. Early
globes are amazing three-dimensional objects
representing both art and science. The spheres
are a paper-over-plaster construction that, while
fragile, is also very stable. Gypsum plaster is inert
and doesn’t impart acidity or decay to those things
it touches. The paper the engravers chose for these
fine instruments was the best, and hand coloring
was done with natural water-based pigments. The
mahogany furniture and the spheres were finished
in a natural resin varnish. All the brass hardware
was engraved and polished.
So, after many painstaking hours, a lot of
research, and some fabrication, the pair were
brought back to their full functionality and beauty
as instruments. Finding a matched pair of globes
from 1836 in any condition is a marvelous thing.
Finding a restorable pair from a famous family
stashed in a crawl space is a miracle. It
was a privilege to conserve them.
Sometimes, the best thing that can happen to an
artifact is to be forgotten. If enough time passes,
an object can transcend the barrier of time and
become useful again, serving as a lens into another
place and time. Artifacts can clarify moments in our
lives, in the history of a town, a nation, or even the
world.
Lost in a storage area at Fruitlands was a pair
of T. M. Bardin’s 12-inch Terrestrial and Celestial
Globes constructed in 1836, with full mahogany
Queen Anne stands and built-in compasses. They
had made their way from England to America and
ultimately wound up in the possession of Amos
Bronson Alcott and his famous literary family in
Concord, Massachusetts. It is easy to imagine him
proudly using these finely made instruments to
show his students the breadth of the world and the
paths of the heavens.
Eventually the globes were sold to Fruitlands
Museum. Set on display for some time, they were
later stored away and forgotten. Over time the
joints on the stands fractured, a compass went
missing, the varnish darkened, and
cracks appeared in the plaster.
— Matthew W. Jones Bookbinder, conservator, globe specialist, Green Dragon Bindery, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
Bronson Alcott’s GlobesS. Edkins, London | 1836 | Wood, metal, paper
Upstairs in the Farmhouse is a room dedicated
to the educational ideas that Bronson Alcott
brought to his Temple School in Boston. In par-
ticular there is a posted copy of the curriculum and
schedule of each class day. Having been a teacher,
there is one standout feature in this curriculum I
highly value: Conversation is a core instructional
method.
Alcott championed the Socratic method to help
children develop their thinking and arrive at more
personal ownership of their learning. He influenced
the public of his time with ideas valuing physical
education, the importance of recess, individual
student desks, nurturing imagination and giving
equal access across gender, race, and social class.
Today many schools more closely resemble the
ideals Bronson valued. Model classrooms use
essential questions when starting any new learn-
ing adventure. Conversations precede and follow
hands-on experiences and when delving into
depths of meaning in literature. Mottos such as
“hands on and mouths open!” and “accountable
talk” are guiding principles for engaging learners.
While his Temple School met a disastrous
closing, his ideas have stood the test of time, and
many contemporary educational leaders stand on
his shoulders to continue improvements in public
education.
— D. F.Harvard, Massachusetts
Unearthing images of schoolroom interiors that
date from the 1830s and 1840s is no easy task.
As a fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in
the summer of 2010, I spent my days poring over
gift annuals, school committee reports, broadsides,
and the occasional lucky find: an illustrated edition
of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow complete with an
engraving of Ichabod Crane in his schoolhouse, or
sheet music covers for long-forgotten songs such
as The Schoolmaster: A Very Popular Glee.
I was researching school architecture for my
dissertation, The Transcendental Schoolroom:
Childhood Education and Literary Culture in
Antebellum America, taking Bronson Alcott’s
Temple School as a case study. Journaling, conver-
sation, and the philosophy of pedagogical space
that evolved out of Alcott’s school not only continue
to inform our ideal version of American education,
Temple School JournalsMartha and George Kuhn | 1835 | Charcoal and chalk
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Alcott Girl’s Doll c. 1840 | Cloth
Among the various items in the Fruitlands
collection attributed to the Alcotts, none are
more intriguing than this little cloth doll. A mere six
inches tall, it is a very simple early nineteenth-
century cloth doll seemingly made from some left-
over rags, exactly the kind of toy you would expect
one of the Alcott girls to have had, given the relative
poverty in which they were raised. We found it in a
box stuffed into a dusty corner of the archive some
years ago along with some other items: an envelope
addressed to Louisa May Alcott, a card showing a
cat playing a fiddle, a broken gold locket, and a few
miscellaneous scraps of paper. This little doll has
always reminded me of the Velveteen Rabbit: well
worn by the love it inspired in the children who
played with it, stashed away and forgotten by its
original owner, but never discarded, and eventually
recognized as something special and preserved.
— M. V.
Louisa May Alcott’s youngest sister May is the
basis for the character of Amy in Little Women.
May Alcott was an accomplished artist at a time
when few American women had careers outside
the home. She studied at the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston in 1859, and taught art to a young Daniel
Chester French who would become an acclaimed
and prolific sculptor. She studied art in Paris,
London, and Rome. In 1878 she married Ernest
Nieriker, a Swiss tobacco merchant sixteen years
her junior, and died in childbirth just one year later.
— M. V.
May Alcott Watercolors (above) Copy of a Turner Seascape | c. 1875 (right) Italian Street | c. 1875
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When the Fruitlands Farmhouse was set up as
a museum in 1914, Clara Endicott Sears gath-
ered together a large variety of significant mate-
rials, including original manuscripts associated
with the Alcotts and other Transcendentalists from
before, during, and after the Fruitlands experiment.
The collection contains primary source documents
created by the family members as well as materi-
als from Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Emerson,
Hawthorne, G.W. Cooke, and John Dwight, among
others. Fruitlands became something of a liter-
ary shrine to the Transcendentalist movement,
and in the early years many of these documents
were on view in the farmhouse exhibits. Over the
years a host of scholars have used the collection
to advance academic research on the American
Transcendentalist movement.
— M. V.
Alcott Family Manuscript Collection1800–1900 | Two linear feet of various papers and ephemera
Susan Robinson’s Temple School ReceiptA.B. Alcott | 1839
Susan Robinson was the young daughter of a
fugitive slave who had safely made it to Boston
by 1839. The Alcott’s Temple School was famous
by this time, first for its revolutionary pedagogy,
and then for the controversy created by the radi-
cal ideals of its founder, Bronson Alcott. Inspired
by his friendship with William Lloyd Garrison, and
against other advice, Alcott enrolled Miss Robinson
in the Temple School to be educated alongside
white children. He even discounted her tuition by
75 percent. This outraged Bostonians, and most
parents removed their children from the school.
Although the school was then forced to close, Alcott
continued to tutor Miss Robinson for another year.
— M. V.
The Gardner family lived on Still River Road
from 1806 to 1866. It was a busy household, and
they hosted parties frequently. Though the guests
at most of the parties were adult ladies and gentle-
men, there was one notable exception in the spring
of 1844.
Three children were present on that day:
13-year-old Alfred Haskell, Walter Gardner, age 11,
and young Louisa May Alcott, also 11, whose family
had been living in a run-down farmhouse in the
intervale. Louisa was the second of four girls, with
a lively imagination and a bit of a willful way about
her. On this particular occasion she was wearing a
white apron on her head trailing down her back, in
a pretend wedding ceremony with Walter. But sud-
denly Louisa changed her mind and announced, “I
am never getting married,” and away she stomped.
Ironically, the tea set used that day in the mock
wedding ceremony ended up in the cupboard of
the very farmhouse where the Alcotts lived, donated
to Fruitlands by one of the Gardner descendants.
— C. P.
Gardner Tea Setc. 1820 | Pink Lustre English transferware
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According to museum records, this is the
original plow used during the Fruitlands
experiment to plow the ten acres of land the group
was able to cultivate. According to records, it was
operated by Fruitlands members since no animal
labor was allowed. The plow is of the so called
“lock-colter” type, known commonly during the
period as a “bull plow.” Progressive farmers during
the 1820s and 30s would not have used this type
of plow; it is very much an eighteenth-century
implement and would have been uncommon by
the 1840s.
— M. V.
Alcott’s Plow1780–1830 | Wood, metal
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The Shaker Office
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The Shaker Office Building, filled with wooden
boxes, brooms, shoe molds, and chairs, is a
gem among the Fruitlands buildings. Serene and
quaint on the outside, it stands out against the
green backdrop of trees and distant fields. As an
intern for Fruitlands, I had the pleasure of working
with the unique Shaker materials housed in this
building. I spent many hours inventorying, packing,
and cleaning the wonderful objects that lay within
its walls, ranging from hand-crafted boxes, Shaker
cloaks hanging on the walls, herbal remedies and
spices, to the large textile looms displayed in the
Sisters’ Room. There was always a new discovery
within the collection and something to be learned
about collections management, procedures, and
processing.
— Rebecca Ellis Syracuse, NY
Very few Shaker signs are still in existence. It is
hard for us to believe today, but like so many
choice Shaker journals and objects, this sign was
found in a rubbish heap by Clara Endicott Sears
after the Harvard Shaker Village had closed. She
recognized its significance immediately. “Public
Meetings Closed” was made during a period in
the mid-nineteenth-century known as Mother’s
Work or the Era of Manifestations, an intensely
spiritual time for the Shakers that corresponds to
what is called the Second Great Awakening. Shaker
religious services at the time involved dancing
and singing, and some members would speak in
tongues, channeling messages from the dead or
divine spirits. Attendance by the public distracted
the Shakers from these spiritual matters and led
them to close their worship services to visitors for
a number of years.
— M. V.
Public Meeting Closed SignShaker Village, Harvard, Massachusetts | c. 1845 | Tin, wood, paint
Shaker Village Food Labels Shaker Office BuildingBuilt 1794, moved to Fruitlands in 1920, opened in 1922
My first memory of Fruitlands was more than
50 years ago when, as part of a group birthday
party of ten-year-old boys from Littleton, we visited
what we called the “Indian Museum.” My enduring
memory is of the dioramas, which captured my
imagination of the early Nashoba settlement and
Mary Shepherd’s abduction during King Philip’s
War. I was fascinated to see the Indian relics,
especially King Philip’s war club.
As a teenager, I visited again with different
interests. My early mentors, William and Shirley
Lawton Houde, introduced me to a different view
of Fruitlands —a view that was to develop into
a lifelong passion. Shirley and her father Frank
Lawton were long-time antique dealers and sold
Miss Sears a number of Shaker pieces, including
the Elder Myrick chest, Shaker seed boxes, the large
workbench (now at Hancock Shaker Village) and
other wonderful things. Like many, I was fascinated
by the beauty and simplicity of the Shaker design
and the craft skills used to make these objects.
Thus began my love for the Shakers, woodworking,
and local history that led me to a career in historic
trades and preservation.
In recent years, I have come to own a Shaker
building that I moved to my home and restored.
My building is similar in size to the Harvard Shaker
Office and was also used as an office. The Museum
became a source of much valuable information,
and having access to these resources and collec-
tions has been invaluable.
I have returned to Fruitlands many times as a
visitor, concert goer, and craftsman. Today I drive
over Prospect Hill many times per week and marvel
at the view and landscape of the valley below. I
often stop for a moment and look to the north and
west and think of those dioramas and how this
landscape and its history captured the imagination
of a young boy.
— Robert AdamShirley, Massachusetts
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I first visited Fruitlands Museum back in 1971 to
collect research for my Master’s thesis on Shaker
music notation. Ten years later I returned, and with
the encouragement of former Museum Director
Richard Reed, I completed an edition of all the
music from the book written by Clara Endicott
Sears titled Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals.
My collection was titled The Happy Journey. It
was published in 1982 and was “Publication #1”
by Fruitlands Museum.
There were 35 Shaker spirituals in that col-
lection, but only one of them was a hymn, titled
The Happy Journey. It was taught to the Harvard
Shakers by Joshua Goodrich from Hancock in 1808
and was written down in their distinctive alphabet
music notation that they called the “letteral system.”
I transcribed the hymn into modern music nota-
tion, and it has been performed numerous times in
concerts and was recorded on the CD Love is Little:
A Sampling of Shaker Spirituals.
I still remember my visits to Fruitlands to do
research and admire the appealing arrangement
of buildings, especially the 1796 Shaker Office that
Clara Endicott Sears had moved to the grounds in
1920 after the Harvard Shaker Village had closed.
That building with many fine Shaker artifacts,
including a very handsome Sarah Bates spirit
drawing, which I included as an illustration in
The Happy Journey music collection, is always a
welcome stop when I visit there. Over the 30 years
since its publication, that collection has helped me
continue on my “happy journey” of sharing Shaker
music with others.
— Roger L. HallMusic preservationist and singer, Stoughton, Massachusetts
This delicate, ivory-handled pen has a five-point
nib designed for drawing the musical staff. In
their earliest recorded songs, the Shakers used a
musical notation scheme based on a system that
dated back to medieval times, which was eventu-
ally abandoned in favor of the system in use today.
Thomas Hammond used this unusual pen, made
for him by Isaac Newton Youngs at Mount Lebanon,
to make blank five-line musical staves on which
he recorded many Shaker songs. Like many other
Shakers he traded songs with people and was an
avid music collector, sharing what he learned dur-
ing the village worship services with other Shaker
communities. This pen must have been one of his
most cherished possessions.
— M. V.
Shaker Spirit DrawingSarah Bates, Mount Lebanon, New York | 1845–1846 | Paper, ink, paint
This Shaker spirit drawing, entitled Wings of Holy
Mother Wisdom, Wings of the Heavenly Father
is one of nine related works attributed to Sarah Bates
from the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. It is part of
the Era of Manifestations or Mother’s Work period, a
time during which many Shakers received spiritually-
inspired visions, spoke in tongues, and had other
experiences. Sister Sarah received these inspired
drawings from a spiritual influence, which were
channeled through her onto paper for expression to
the Shaker community. This drawing was a gift to
Clara Endicott Sears from Sister Catherine Allen of
Mount. Lebanon in 1918.
— M. V.
Musical Notation PenI. N. Youngs, Mount Lebanon, New York | 1826 | Fruitwood, metal, ivory
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This hanging case of drawers was probably
used for storing sewing and knitting materials.
Even a diminutive utilitarian case of drawers like
this one provides a rich example of Shaker design
and craftsmanship. With two larger drawers on the
left and three on the right, the case exemplifies the
ways Shaker craftsmen use proportion and symme-
try in their furniture designs. Hidden within, there
is quite intricate dovetailing of all drawers at the
front and back.
— M. V.
Hanging DrawersShaker Village, Harvard, Massachusetts | c. 1850 | Pine, red wash, brass
Harvard Shaker Ministry DeskAlfred Collier, Shaker Village, Harvard, Massachusetts | 1861 | Pine, maple, chestnut, original green painted finish
This standing desk was made by Brother
Alfred Collier for Elder Grove Blanchard over
the course of about six months in 1861. By the
time the desk was made these two brethren had
known each other for 30 years; Brother Alfred
had become a Shaker at age eight in 1831 when
Elder Grove was already in the Harvard ministry.
A decade later, Elder Grove selected Brother Alfred
to be a Chosen Instrument during the Era of
Manifestations, one of only five and the youngest
brother to be selected. Besides managing the
farm for the village for 20 years, Brother Alfred
learned the fine art of woodworking and by 1860
had mastered the craft. The desk has a remarkable
bright green wash, with details and hardware
that show some worldly influences. (Ironically,
three years later, other more lascivious worldly
influences forced Elder Grove to expel Brother
Alfred from the Shakers.)
— M. V.
Shirley Shaker Ministry Desk Shaker Village, Shirley, Massachusetts | c. 1860 | Wood, metal
The Harvard and Shirley Shaker Villages formed
a bishopric and were managed by the same
Ministry Elders. This desk was used by the Elder
and Eldress while in the Shirley Shaker Village; they
probably shared the desk, which may explain why
there are two drawers on the top tier.
— M. V.
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Native American Collection
HerbariumElisha Myrick | 1857 | Paper, plant materials
The Herbarium was an essential tool to document and teach plant
identification in the Harvard Shaker Village, considering that the
main industry of the village was selling herbs. This very rare herbarium
of plants grown and gathered by the Harvard Shakers, compiled by
Elisha Myrick in the early 1850s, has 157 pages, each containing a plant
pressing and a handwritten taxonomic name.
Brother Elisha gained some attention for his expertise—besides
interacting with notable botanists in Boston and Worcester, he was
recognized by Kew Gardens in England for his knowledge of botany.
— M. V.
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First Nations families on the Northwest Coast celebrated occasions with
dances and feasts held in large lodges built to accommodate large groups
of celebrants. Each lodge contained an assortment of decorative totems that
included symbolism relating to the various nations, clans, and families in
attendance, particularly the host. Some of the most impressive objects were the
large feast bowls, like this example, known as lukwalil, or “feasting dish on the
floor of the house.” Like most Northwest Coast art forms, these feast bowls were
carved in the shape of animals and supernatural beings. The foods they served
were typically fish oil and various kinds of meats and berries, both fresh and
preserved. Winter dance ceremonies and potlatches reinforced and strength-
ened tribal relationships through the redistribution or sometimes destruction
of wealth. The status of a family was raised not by who had the most resources,
but by who gave the most away.
— M. V.
Northwest Coast Potlatch Feast Bowl Kwakiutl, Northwest Coast | c. 1880 | Wood, polychrome, metal
Woven by women of the Salish and Tlingit tribes of the Northwest Coast,
Chilkat dancing blankets were made from a variety of materials including
cedar bark, mountain goat wool, dog hair, and plant fibers. Men designed the
blankets by painting the geometric patterns on a special board. Ritual dancers in
various ceremonies, including the Potlatch, traditionally wore Chilkat blankets.
This blanket was made for a child to use during ceremonial dancing rituals,
which involved dancing, drumming, and spirit raising by a shaman.
— M. V.
Chilkat Blanket Northwest Coast | 19th century | Textile, cedar, wood
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This fine example of early Southwestern pottery
(left) was probably made between 1900 and
1920. The design is a bird with flowers, a common
motif in Southwestern pottery, but what sets this
example apart is the size of the vessel, the vibrancy
of the colors on both the outside and interior, and
the quality in the execution of the design. Pottery
was made in the Southwest for thousands of years,
and these traditional skills enabled native commu-
nities to transform a time-honored craft into the
emerging market economy. Since this vessel does
not have any wear on its rim that would suggest
everyday use, we assume it was probably made for
sale.
— M. V.
Effigy CanteenZia Pueblo, Acoma | c. 1900 | Ceramic, paintIn the arid environment of the desert Southwest,
there can be great distances between sources of
water, so ceramic canteens are important to the
Native American people in those areas. Canteens
like this (right) were made all over the Southwest
by Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo people, and eventually
became important items for sale, enabling tradi-
tional forms and designs to survive. The design of
this particular canteen is very traditional, with two
lugs for a fabric or rope strap and a narrow neck that
probably once had a corn cob stopper. The deer form
is a bit unusual, though; typically deer motifs have
an arrow-shaped line from the mouth into the body
of the animal, and may also have a geometric shape
within the center of the body.
— M. V.
Southwest Effigy Olla Acoma, Southwest | c. 1920 | Clay, polychrome paint
Pima Maze Tray Pima, Southwest | c. 1900 | Willow shoots, devilclaw
When I was working on a design for an
outdoor labyrinth for Fruitlands in 2003,
Mike Volmar, the curator, called me excitedly
and said, “I think there’s a basket with a
labyrinth design in the Native American
collection.”
The design is what the Pima
people of Arizona call Man in the
Maze. Tight, even rows of alternat-
ing dark and light fibers spiral into
the center. They cross the perpen-
dicular lines that emanate out from
the midpoint as if traversing the
sun’s rays radiating from the source.
Perfectly round and flat, this beau-
tiful Pima basket in the Fruitlands
collection might have once been once
used in a sacred ceremony. There is a
quality of stillness and balance that the
fine workmanship conveys.
This indeed is a true labyrinth, a teaching.
Mazes have dead ends, and travelers must often
retrace their steps and start over. A labyrinth is a
continuous journey to the center and back out. The
seeker might feel that the journey is taking forever,
its circuitous path leading quickly to the center,
to that very thing they are seeking; but then lead-
ing almost back to the beginning. Again, around
and around they must go, never giving up, until
imperceptibly, they have arrived at their goal. If they
pause along the way, there is the past behind and
the future in front —but nowhere else to go, only
the present moment.
Though no one knows for sure where this
particular design originated, it is clearly impor-
tant because the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian
Community uses it for its Great Seal. Recognizing
its significance, I chose to use this design to create
the large outdoor labyrinth at Fruitlands. Visitors
can experience its teachings as they walk the stone
and grass labyrinth on the hill.
— Linda HoffmanHarvard, Massachusetts
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The youngster stood transfixed at Fruitlands before a model of nine
young tribal men sun-dancing around a pole at high noon. Who
were they? Why had each pierced his own flesh? How could they?
The boy matured, learned to speak Spanish, and visited Mexico. He
eventually confessed to his family, “Now I know what I want to be.” As a
Northeastern College of Nursing co-op student, he earned a full summer
job in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Hospital’s emergency room. Pine
Ridge is the national, political, economic, and cultural headquarters of
the Indian Nation. It is located near South Dakota’s Black Mountains,
tempting to a White Mountains climber. He accepted the job.
Later, when he would return to the Massachusetts hill town where he
first studied the model sun-dance, he would revisit Fruitlands’ western
views of layered monadnocks and lush green valleys.
— Jean McCroskyHarvard, Massachusetts
American Art
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Growing up in Harvard, I visited Fruitlands
Museum on occasion with school groups
and family, but it wasn’t until my college years that
I really got to know the place. While studying art
at Southeastern Massachusetts University in the
1970s, I worked summers at the Museum. My duties
were primarily of the grounds-keeping and janito-
rial variety, but there was plenty at Fruitlands to fuel
my growing interests in nature and art. Outdoors,
I could pause from the mowing to savor the calls
of meadowlarks and bobolinks drifting across the
fields. From the Museum collections I gained an
appreciation of American Indian art and Shaker
design.
But it was in the Art Gallery that I found
the greatest inspiration. My favorite duty was
carpet sweeping the big rear gallery, lined with
large Hudson River landscapes. My favorite was
Bierstadt’s oil of San Rafael, California, but canvases
by Fisher, Church, and Kensett also vied for my
attention.
Little could I have guessed, back in those college
days, that in the future my own paintings would
hang on the museum walls! “Birds” was the theme
for 2010, and I was asked to mount a one-person
show in the Wayside, along with an educational
display in the Ell gallery. Best of all, I was invited
to be the 2010 Artist-in-Residence! Through the
spring, summer, and fall I visited Fruitlands regu-
larly, producing thirty finished watercolor paintings
of birds, butterflies, plants, and landscapes. Two of
those paintings are now in the permanent collec-
tion. My connection to Fruitlands, begun so long
ago, had come full circle.
— Barry Van Dusen, ArtistPrinceton, Massachusetts
San Rafael, California Albert Bierstadt | c. 1875 | Oil on canvas
Americans’ belief in the country’s “manifest
destiny” was reinforced by the grandeur of
Albert Bierstadt’s huge panoramic paintings of the
lofty Western mountains. Bierstadt, the flamboy-
ant showman, painted immense landscapes, some
as large as 10 x 15 feet. This scene of the California
Coastal Range at San Rafael (right) is painted in
the style called Luminism, a style that is unique to
the second generation Hudson River painters. A
golden color from the hot summer sun suffuses
the landscape in a divine light that seems to radiate
out from within the canvas itself. Bierstadt probably
painted this landscape shortly after his third trip to
the West between 1871 and 1883.
— Michael Volmar Chief Curator, Fruitlands Museum
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Mt. Ascutney from Claremont, New HampshireAlbert Bierstadt | 1862 | Oil on canvas
Painted during the Civil War, this painting may
be interpreted as a transition between the
idealism and promise of the young nation in the
first half of the nineteenth century and the rise
of the ravages of the Industrial Revolution in the
second half. Characteristic of Albert Bierstadt in size
and scope, the painting shows how humans in 1862
are beginning to alter the pristine wilderness of the
tranquil upper valley of the Connecticut River. Men
are cutting hay and building stone walls to fence in
their grazing animals, and in the center foreground
is the stump of a large tree that may be seen as
symbolic of civilization’s destruction of the earth.
Nature was no longer worshiped with the awe-
inspiring reverence of the early settlers, and it was
to be harnessed and channeled later in the century
to run America’s emerging industries.
— M. V.
This collection of two portraits, a chest and
a series of letters document the courtship
between Jonathan Dodge Wheeler and Elisabeth
Davenport. Not long after their wedding, Elisabeth
died of consumption, as her pallid complexion
and the dark circles under her eyes foretell. When
Jonathan later remarried, this portrait pair was
retired to an attic, replaced by pendant portraits
of the new Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler. A descendant
discovered the portraits more than a century later,
accompanied by the chest full of love letters, a little
purse and this note: “This Pocket Book was my
dearest beloved’s and it is as she left it in her draw
when she died & left me heart broken. I will come
soon. J. D. W. Nov. 25.”
— M. V.
Davenport Wheeler CollectionAlvan Clark | 1829 | Two portraits and a trunk filled with letters
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View of the Hudson River from West PointRobert Weir | 1869 | Oil on canvas
My family has deep roots in Harvard, and I
grew up down the road from the Museum.
I became more interested in my own family history
when I worked at Fruitlands as one of four young
women hired by William Henry Harrison, who was
the curator at the time. We were assigned to any
building to give tours. We spent afternoons sitting
on the grass listening to him tell stories about the
history of Fruitlands. It was wonderful!
Several items in the Museum are favorites of
mine. One is Mother Ann Lee’s chair, upstairs in
the Shaker Museum. I worked at the Museum for
four summers during college and spent a lot of
time sitting next to that chair. Another favorite is
the Hudson River painting of the Palisades, which
always fascinated me; I think of that painting often
when I experience the beautiful and brilliant land-
scapes of this country and places around the world.
— Joan BlueStoneham, Massachusetts
Upper Hudson Thomas Birch | c. 1828 | Oil on wood panel
This small, intimate glimpse of nature is an
unusual painting by Thomas Birch, an artist
from Philadelphia who specialized in seascapes.
He painted historic marine engagements between
American and British ships during of the War of
1812 and many other romantic scenes of action and
life at sea. Exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts along with Thomas Doughty and Alvan
Fisher, Birch was among the major early landscape
painters who inspired young Thomas Cole to create
America’s first native artistic style, the Hudson River
Landscape School.
— M. V.
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The Landscape
Need landscape photo (could be a long panorama that goes across spread...
White pine bends
under the wind’s slow hand,
exhales in fecund clouds.
—Susan Edwards RichmondPoet in residence, 2007
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Rooster Weather Vanec. 1850 | Gilded molded copper and lead
This rooster weathervane graced the barn at
100 Prospect Hill Road for many decades. Made
from molded copper, zinc, and lead and then gilded
with gold leaf, it is possibly a Hamburg Rooster
Weathervane made by L. W. Cushing & Sons of
Waltham, Massachusetts, an important company
that manufactured weathervanes in the United
States between 1865 and 1933. Besides roosters,
manufacturers also made weathervanes featuring
other farm animals, famous race horses, and archi-
tectural and patriotic designs. Some of the earliest
weathervane forms in America —such as the grass-
hopper atop Faneuil Hall in Boston —were inspired
by forms that date back to ancient Greece.
— Michael Volmar Chief Curator, Fruitlands Museum
Objects “speak” of history, of beauty, of cre-
ation, of love. Museums are the repositories
of what we consider objects of permanent value.
It is no coincidence that marauding armies attack,
destroy, or steal objects collected within an enemy’s
museums: these objects are our heritage. Raid my
museum and you steal those items I value most.
Yet museums are more than objects. The value
of the Fruitlands collections is greater than the sum
of the individual objects because the collections
also represent ideas.
We are bound by those ideas as well. Our histo-
rians and the Shakers, the Transcendentalists, the
landscape painters all examined and celebrated the
heritage of a farming tradition and a connection to
the land. Most of the landscape painters depicted
a lush and peaceful countryside from promontory
views that emphasized the insignificance of man
in contrast to God’s abundant earth. Those allegori-
cal Hudson River School paintings are really about
a landscape made by man. The wilderness is over
there—someplace else—hinted at in the distant
views of the paintings, if depicted at all.
The difference between the wild and civilized
man was once thought to be the latter’s belief
in God. Comprehending God in nature was the
essence of Transcendentalism, yet even they felt
an affinity for the untamed. Thoreau mourned
the loss of untrammeled nature. The popularity of
landscape paintings encouraged people to visit the
places that had been so inspirational. People flocked
to the upper Hudson Valley or the White Mountains
seeking temporary renewal. They dreamed of living
in the midst of pastoral grandeur.
Our vistas have shrunk, diminished by suc-
ceeding generations carving up the landscape for
their own use. We long for the oases of respite. I am
bound to the land. Like many before me it restores
me. Climbing mountains is no longer a pastime
for me; those breathtaking promontories require
energy and legs I no longer have. But I have come
to cherish the intimate landscapes that can provide
opportunity for reflection rather than awe. The
epiphany that comes with a sigh of recognition
does not need an overlook.
When we started what is now the Freedom’s
Way National Heritage Area, we set out to examine
if others felt as we did. What we discovered was
that all of us felt a similar bond that was expressed
by integrating the land, our ideas, and our history.
Fruitlands is the center of Freedom’s Way. It is also
a museum that recognizes how the landscape can
become a collection in its own right and there-
fore another dimension of the collection of things
we value most. Most importantly, it provides us
with the chance to take a moment and see what is
around us all over again.
— Marge DarbyHarvard, Massachusetts
The Old Meadow
He, who knows his way, stops seeing.
—Korean Saying