Winterthur Comes to Nantucket
The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is delighted to announce the opening of Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850, a traveling exhibition organized Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, which will open to the general public on Friday, July 3, in the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street. “Harbor & Home provides a rich contextual examination of the cabinetmaking and clockmaking crafts of the Southeastern Massachusetts area,” states one press report from the exhibition’s opening venue in Delaware.
Organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, the exhibition explores the largely unstudied region of New England furniture—specifically the area between Boston and Providence, including the seafaring communities of the Cape and the islands. Of the over seventy pieces of furniture, along with paintings, portraits, maps, prints, and ship furniture, thirteen artifacts are on loan from the NHA collections. These include important donations from the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association and the Max and Heidi Berry Acquisition Fund.
The Nantucket appearance of the exhibition is made possible with support from Wilmington Trust FSB Massachusetts, Mr. and Mrs. Amos B. Hostetter Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Hampton S. Lynch, and Mr. and Mrs. Jay Wilson, and Anonymous.
“Island-made furniture constructed at the highest levels of artistry and craftsmanship is extremely rare,” said Ben Simons, Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator of the Nantucket Historical Association. “The Nantucket Historical Association is fortunate to include in its collection select pieces that appear in Harbor & Home—thanks largely to the generosity of many generations of donors. Classic Nantucket furniture can attain the polish and finesse of its mainland cousins, but often retains an air of the charm and quirkiness that are essential island characteristics.”
The NHA pieces in the traveling exhibition highlight the work by Nantucket craftsmen and cabinetmakers of the late 1700s and early 1800s, including well-known Nantucket cabinetmaker Heman Ellis, and Walter Folger Jr., who made the 1790 astronomical tall-case clock frequently cited as one of the most important American clocks to have been made during the days of the early republic, and is featured on numerous publicity pieces for the exhibition. Folger was a gifted scholar, inventor, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who spent two years building the workings of the clock; its grand mahogany case was made by cabinetmaker Cornelius Allen.
Other Nantucket pieces include examples of the classic Windsor chair, a style that was favored by the common man and by our first presidents; a four-slat ladderback Quaker Monthly Meeting side chair; and an outstanding inlaid tilt-top candlestand and a cylinder-fall inlaid Federal desk made by Heman Ellis.
Hailing from Virginia, show organizer Brock Jobe, professor of American Decorative Arts at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate and author of the catalog featuring the exhibition, worked for five years investigating the history and furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts. He and his several cohorts canvassed over 200 sites, discovering 2,000 pieces of regional furniture—more than 70 pieces appear in the exhibition—and 106 are showcased in the exhibition catalog. He will present Harbor & Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710-1850 as part of the August Antiques Show programming when he speaks at the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association Lecture on July 28.
The exhibition will open to the public on Friday, July 3, and will be on display in the Peter Foulger Gallery through November 2. The museum is open daily, 10 A.M.–5 P.M. and on the first and third Wednesdays in July and August until 8 P.M.
