MEMBERS

Keshia Case, M.A.

Here's a great idea for parents with children who still want their historical tours.

VSA member Keshia Case is the founder of About Town Moms that takes Richmond locals on historical neighborhood walks, private museum tours and cultural adventures with their children.   The tours educate, bring variety to the week and introduce a great group of moms. Most are designed for mothers with children who still enjoy riding in a stroller.

In Richmond, Keshia has worked with the Virginia Historical Society, Library of Virginia, Richmond History Center and Virginia Commonwealth University while researching the city’s past. Keshia is currently working on two publications: "Richmond Then & Now" and "A House Befitting: The Architectural Evolution of Virginia’s Executive Mansion."

Keshia has been in the museum industry since 1994. She received her Master's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Art History with a specialty in Richmond Architectural History.

For more see the web site at :www.abouttownmoms.com

Robert Skaler

Society Hill And Old City (Images of America) (Paperback)
by Robert Morris Skaler

In the 18th century, Society Hill was home to wealthy merchants and many members of the federal government. In Old City, artisans and workmen lived and worked in small row houses like those on Elfrerth’s Alley. As Philadelphia developed, it abandoned its Colonial center. Almost forgotten by 1900, Society Hill had become home to poor immigrants and its once gracious houses had become run-down tenements, shops, and warehouses. Yet, at the same time, Society Hill remained Philadelphia’s banking and insurance center. Beginning in the 1960s, under the direction of city planner Edmund Bacon and the National Park Service, this neglected neighborhood was restored. Society Hill and Old City documents how these two neighborhoods looked in the early 1900s. The book’s carefully researched narrative and vintage images tell the story of these historic neighborhoods.

VSA member Robert Morris Skaler is a forensic architect, architectural historian, and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture. He is the author of West Philadelphia: University City to 52nd Street and Philadelphia’s Broad Street: South and North.

Ian Dungavell - back now, brimming with enthusiasm
VSA member and Director of the UK Victorian Society,


I'm back now, after a wonderful six-and-a-half weeks tour in the United States and Australia!

It was a fabulous experience, tremendously useful, and great fun.

I was welcomed with incredible warmth and enthusiasm in the cities I visited, and I enjoyed immensely the opportunity to learn from colleagues in voluntary sector heritage organisations. I learnt a lot which I hope will be of lasting benefit both to the Victorian Society and other similar groups.

I'm writing a report on my trip for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and I'll be posting a copy [on my web site]  once I complete it... hopefully early in 2006!

In the meantime, a huge 'thank you' to everyone who made this such a great experience. And I want to encourage everyone to check the website of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to see if they, too, can undertake their own journey of a lifetime...

[Personal thanks to John Simonelli, Bruce Davies, Alan Ruscoe, and John Cooper, David DeSmith, Harry Lowe, Dudley Brown, Sallie Wadsworth, Kathleen Bennett and other members of the Victorian Society in America]

More at: www.dungavell.net

THE VICTORIAN SCHOLARSHIP FUND TEA 2005 CREATED 61 NEW MEMBERS OF THE VSA - Thank you.

GIVE THE GIFT OF MEMBERSHIP

Members are reminded that a gift membership of the Society may be the perfect holiday present for your Victorian friends.  Contact us with the details for a new member, and we will mail a welcome package, including a gift card in your name, to any new member in time for the holidays. 

Membership rates:
 Individual $45; Household $55, Student $30, Institutional $40.

SIGN UP ONLINE
 

MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS

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Click the banner above to visit the new England chapter web site

Congratulations to the New England Chapter for their initiative and style  in producing an admirable Chapter web site: an object lesson to all other Chapters...

MAYMONT HOUSE MUSEUM
Holiday Tours

December 1-31, Tuesday-Sunday, 12:00-4:30

Celebrate a very special Christmas at VSA member Maymont House Museum, decorated in authentic Victorian holiday splendor.  The festive trimmings of the lavishly bedecked tree and the elegance of the opulent dining room are only part of the spectacular display that depicts a traditional upper-class Victorian Christmas.

 For information on special holiday events in December call (804) 358-7166, Ext. 329 or visit www.maymont.org
Picture: Dennis McWaters

CAPE MAY
Christmas Candlelight House Tours

VSA member Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts reminds us that these self-guided tours are  the main attractions of Cape May's festive holiday season.

See: www.capemaymac.org

President Benjamin Harrison Home
 

Holiday Doll Exhibit and Traditional Decor

Now through December 30, 2005

 

Victorian and collectible dolls through the ‘70s will be displayed throughout the Harrison Home in its holiday décor, including the 10-foot Christmas tree decorated with Harrison family treasures, a replica of the first tree decorated in the White House.  Doll exhibit and holiday décor are included in the home’s daily tours.  More tours and information at  the web site: www.pbhh.org. 

 VSA member President Benjamin Harrison Home, 1230 N. Delaware Street, Indianapolis. 
Call 317-631-1888 for details and/or reservations.    

MISCELLANY

CALL FOR SPEAKERS

Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in Pennsburg, Montgomery County, PA.

"Pennsylvania Germans and the Victorian Taste"

The Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in Pennsburg, Montgomery County, PA., is seeking speakers for a possible symposium next year that will relate to our exhibition "Pennsylvania Germans and the Victorian Taste."

Speakers need not have a specific familiarity with the PA Germans -- but rather an ability to speak on aspects of early American Victorian decorative arts that the PA Germans particularly appreciated, such as transferware and other Staffordshire wares of the period; American Empire furniture; Berlin work; ladies' fancy work or crafts; and Currier  & Ives.  Please contact:

Candace Perry
Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center
www.schwenkfelder.com
215-679-3103

Arts & Crafts

“A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement” MWPAI Exhibition Explores Innovative and Expressive Brass Furniture and Accessories until March 19^th 2006 at the VSA member organization: Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in Utica, New York. For details www.mwpai.org

The Indianapolis Museum of Art are holding a major exhibition of International Arts & Crafts, following the exhibition in London. The exhibition will run through January 22, 2006. For details http://www.indy.org/page/whattodo/8133705.html

 

Following on from this, the International Arts & Crafts exhibition will move to de Young Museum in San Francisco March 18 through June 18, 2006. For details:

http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/index.asp

 

The Norton Simon Museum of Art Pasadena, is holding an exhibition ‘An Assortment of Beauties, Japanese Woodblock Prints Collected by Frank Lloyd Wright, running until January 9^th 2006. For further details www.nortonsimon.org

 

The Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington is holding an exhibition English Arts & Crafts Pottery from the Cary D Stevens Collection, running until January 22^nd 2006.  http://www.delart.org/

 

Dates have been published for next years Arts & Crafts Antique Show and Conference at the Grove Park Inn, Asheville. The Conference runs from February 17^th to February 19^th. For details http://www.arts-craftsconference.com/

 

Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum (Delaware Art Museum, 2005) will be on view at:

• Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum in San Antonio (October 1 - January 1, 2006)

• Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota (January 28 - April 2, 2006)

•  Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa (April 22 - July 2, 2006)

•  Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh (July 29 - October 8, 2006)

•  Cincinnati Art Museum (Oct 28, 2006-January 7, 2007)

•  Saint Louis Art Museum (February 3 - April 15, 2006)

• San Diego Museum of Art (May 5 - July 15, 2007).

For details http://www.delart.org/

Overbeck Pottery of the Arts & Crafts Movement runs until 8^th January 2006 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. For further information http://www.ima-art.org/

 

The Potter’s Eye: New Perspectives on North Carolina’s Pottery Tradition, running until 19^th March 2006. For details visit North Carolina Museum of Art http://ncartmuseum.org/

 

Crosscurrents: Art, Craft and Design in North Carolina running until 8^th January 2006 at the North Carolina Museum of Art http://ncartmuseum.org/

 

Tiffany Art Glass for the public until 12^th January 2006 - The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art http://www.morsemuseum.org/

 

Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower until 15^th January 2006, Price Tower Arts Center www.pricetower.org

 

Extraordinary Every Day: The Bauhaus at the Busch-Reisinger until 31^st December at The Busch-Reisinger Museum: http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/busch/

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH

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THE GILDER LEHRMAN INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN HISTORY
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/

 Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. Increasingly national and international in scope, the Institute's initiatives target audiences ranging from students to scholars to the general public.

The Institute creates history-centered schools and academic research centers; organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators; produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions; and sponsors lectures by eminent historians.

The Institute funds awards including the Lincoln and Frederick Douglass Book Prizes and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and other archives.  Many programs and initiatives are free to educators and scholars, including:

• Summer Seminars and other professional development opportunities for teachers and college professors;

• History Now (www.historynow.org) a quarterly, interactive, online journal featuring articles by historians, lesson plans;

• Lectures, symposia, conferences and traveling exhibitions on American history;

• A number of publications, including “Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760-1820” available free of charge to history teachers, professors and institutional libraries.

To order a copy, educators and librarians should email name, title, school or library and address to resources@gilderlehrman.org.

Awards include the History Teacher of Year; and fellowships for scholars and journalists to work in history archives.

PREVIOUS WEB SITES OF THE MONTH

It is full Winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The Autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Opening stanzas, Humanitad. Oscar Wilde (1854–1900).  Poems.  1881.

Cherry Creek Inn, NY

VSA members Sharon and Lester Sweeting run this delightful bed & breakfast inn in Cherry Creek, NY.  George N. Frost, a well-known race horse breeder and one of Cherry Creek’s founding Fathers built this splendid Italian Villa in the 1860s., now lovingly restored.  Great for Winter being only two miles from Cockaigne Ski Area.

Cherry Creek Inn
1022 West Road (Cr-68)
Cherry Creek , NY 14723
innkeeper@cherrycreekinn.net
716-296-5105

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ritual Spaces and Places:  Memory and Commemoration in 19^th Century America
The 10^th Annual Salve Regina University Conference on Cultural and Historic Preservation
September 14-16, 2006

PROPOSALS BY JANUARY 1, 2006

Commemorative spaces and their accompanying rituals represent windows into nineteenth-century American culture.  Religion, patriotism, and sentiment were integral components not just in the creation of National Parks, battlefields and landscape cemeteries, but also in contemporary movements in urban planning, interior design and architecture.  Frequently, efforts to remember and perpetuate stories, persons or events resulted in competing versions of the same memories, creating contested and contentious debates that have reverberated into the present.  Salve Regina’s 10^th Annual Conference on Cultural and Historic Preservation will focus on this intersection of memory and place as well as on the preservation of these places in the modern age.

Proposals for papers that examine these issues are sought from scholars in all fields, including architecture and art history, archaeology, the decorative arts, anthropology, landscape, literature, American studies and social history.  Submittals from younger scholars and graduate students are also welcome.  Proposals should include 250-word abstracts and CVs.  Please send proposals by January 1, 2006, to:

Catherine Zipf
Salve Regina University
100 Ochre Point Ave.
Newport, RI  02840
Catherine.Zipf@salve.edu

Subjects for papers may include—but are not limited to—the following:

• Commemorative architecture, landscapes and interiors

• Indoor or outdoor memorials and statuary

• Commemoration and urban planning

• Memory and oral history

• War memorials and nostalgia

• Cemeteries and funerary monuments

• National holidays

• Stained glass windows

ETIQUETTE OF GLOVES AND NAPKIN

Ladies always wear gloves to formal dinners and take them off at table. Entirely off. It is hideous to leave them on the arm, merely turning back the hands. Both gloves and fan are supposed to be laid across the lap, and one is supposed to lay the napkin folded once in half across the lap too, on top of the gloves and fan, and all three are supposed to stay in place on a slippery satin skirt on a little lap, that more often than not slants downward.

It is all very well for etiquette to say “They stay there,” but every woman knows they don’t! And this is quite a nice question: If you obey etiquette and lay the napkin on top of the fan and gloves loosely across your satin-covered knees, it will depend merely upon the heaviness and position of the fan’s handle whether the avalanche starts right, left or forward, onto the floor. There is just one way to keep these four articles (including the lap as one) from disintegrating, which is to put the napkin cornerwise across your knees and tuck the two side corners under like a lap robe, with the gloves and the fan tied in place as it were. This ought not to be put in a book of etiquette, which should say you must do nothing of the kind, but it is either do that or have the gentleman next you groping under the table at the end of the meal; and it is impossible to imagine that etiquette should wish to conserve the picture of “gentlemen on all fours” as the concluding ceremonial at dinners.

Emily Post (1873–1960).  Etiquette.  1922.

And finally, your staff of one at the email newsletter wishes you a happy holiday at this year's end with a borrowing from Whitman:

.. heavy snow-storm blocking up everything, and keeping us in. But souls, hearts, thoughts, unloos’d. And so—one and all, little and big—hav’n’t we had a good time?

IN GOOD CHEER
John Cooper

Let us know what you think of the e-newsletter and what you like to see in it.

UNTIL NEXT TIME
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The Victorian Society in America
205 S. Camac Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
info@victoriansociety.org

Copyright 2005. Victorian Society in America. All rights reserved.
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