Carriages and Sleighs
The Museum exhibits about 225 carriages and horse-drawn vehicles, including sleighs, stagecoaches, and commercial wagons. Most date from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and nearly every type of vehicle used in New England at that time is represented.
It was a 1946 gift of 28 elegant carriages from the estate of Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb that prompted Electra Webb’s decision to create Shelburne Museum. The Webb vehicles exemplify the finest-quality luxury transportation from the 1890s, with carriages made by Brewster and Company of New York City and custom-made vehicles by Million et Guiet of Paris, France, including a rare 1890 Berlin Coach, with its gold satin-lined interior and exquisite brass, leather, and painted details.
Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building
Shelburne’s remarkable Impressionist paintings are exhibited in the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building, which re-creates six interiors from the Museum founder’s 1930s Park Avenue, New York City apartment.
Memorial Building is a Greek Revival structure based on an Orwell, Vermont house that Mrs. Webb had admired. After her death in 1960, Mrs. Webb’s children built the gallery to fulfill her wish that her Impressionist paintings and 18th-century English furniture come to the Museum. The building was completed in 1967.
Unlike the Museum’s historic houses, which provide insight into Mrs. Webb’s interests as a collector, Memorial Building tells something of the forces that influenced her life. The rooms are a formal combination of English, European, and Asian furniture and decorative objects as well as high-style American pieces, such as a suite of furniture by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
1950's House
The popular hands-on 1950 House evokes post-WWII optimism and prosperity. Visitors experience everyday life in Vermont’s last years before television throughout the one-story, 1,000-square-foot ranch house.
Visitors are encouraged to read LIFE magazines from 1950, listen to Perry Como and radio detective shows, and explore the bedrooms to see how a young veteran and his growing family lived. The house is furnished with authentic artifacts, including a wringer washing machine in the basement and a 1939 Chevy in the driveway.
The 1950 House provides a striking comparison with both contemporary life and the Museum’s other historic houses: Settler’s House (which interprets 1790s Vermont) and Dutton House (1820s).
Toys, Dolls, Doll Houses
Shelburne Museum’s European and American dolls include bisque, papier-maché, Parian, china, wax, wood and cloth pieces, most of them made 1760 – 1930. About 400 dolls are on exhibition in Variety Unit.
Exhibited with the dolls are 19th and 20th-century dollhouses; they include an English Gothic Revival house and the idiosyncratic Ramshackle Inn, a rambling American house with an artist’s studio in the attic. A book about the doll collection, The Dolls of Shelburne Museum, by Jean M. Burks is available both in the Museum Store and in the online store.
Automata are large (sometimes three feet tall), often comical wind-up toys with accompanying music that were displayed in parlors, especially in France, in the late-19th and early 20th centuries.
Vintage toys, with several new acquisitions, are exhibited in the Toy Shop. They include 19th-century cast-iron banks, toy carriages, fire trucks and an operating American Flyer toy train display.
This cradle is for adults, not babies
Circus Exhibit
Among the most popular exhibitions at Shelburne are two hand-carved wood circuses: the Roy Arnold Circus Parade and the Kirk Bros. Circus.
The Arnold Circus Parade has nearly 4,000 figures. It was made between 1925-55 and forms a parade over 500 feet long. The one-inch-to-one-foot scale figures include a myriad of clowns, acrobats, animals, and circus wagons that evoke the heyday of the circus era.
The Kirk Bros. Circus is a miniature three-ring circus with audience comprised of over 3,500 pieces. Edgar Kirk (1891-1956) fashioned the figures over 40 years using only a treadle jigsaw and penknife.
Shelburne Museum has more than 500 circus posters dating from 1870 to 1940. The imaginative, bright-colored posters advertise Barnum and Bailey, Ringling Brothers, and other major shows. Although not on permanent display, the posters are featured in changing exhibitions.
The restored 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga is a National Historic Landmark and the last walking beam side-wheel passenger steamer in existence. Built in Shelburne in 1906, it operated as a day boat on Lake Champlain serving ports along the New York and Vermont shores until 1953. In 1955, the Ti was moved two miles overland from the lake to Shelburne Museum in a remarkable engineering effort that stands as one of the great feats of maritime preservation.
Today the Ticonderoga portrays life on board in 1923. The ship’s carved and varnished woodwork, gilded ceilings, staterooms, grand staircase, and dining room recall the old -fashioned elegance of steamboat travel. Visitors may explore the Ti’s massive engine, four decks, pilot’s house, galley, and crew’s quarters.
No comments:
Post a Comment