THE BERKSHIRES, AN IDEAL ESCAPE

The Berkshires: Retreat and Escape, the 2006 fall symposium, held the end of October in Stockbridge, MA, was a pleasant surprise for those who had not visited the area and made a satisfying return for those who had. The Red Lion Inn, our host hotel, received us with a constant fire in the lobby fireplace, a very friendly local staff and cozy old-fashioned rooms — the perfect place for our fall retreat.

Cornelia Gilder and Richard Jackson, authors of “Houses of the Berkshires, 1870–1930,” presented our opening lecture Thursday evening in St. Paul’s Church across from our hotel. Even the church was full of Berkshire history.

Our lectures were held at the town hall, a ten-minute walk away, which housed us nicely providing a quiet, self-contained sanctuary for our lectures and biennial book sale. The mayor of Stockbridge welcomed us warmly.

In this setting our mornings were easily focused on lectures and lecturers. All the presentations were highly informative as well as entertaining, preparing us nicely for the afternoon visits. One expects high level academic lectures in New England, the bedrock of education in America, and we were also pleased to find this same high level carried through the museums and house museums we visited.

Trust members enjoy drinks overlooking the gardens of The Mount.

The Daniel Chester French house, Chesterwood, proved to be a comfortable home with wallpaper of green forests in the hall and a generous porch with beautiful views of surrounding mountains. His studio had a short railroad running in through huge doors allowing him to view his large sculpture indoors and out. It was full of his tools and several life-size sculptures, urging us to imagine French as intermediary.

The Mount, the beautiful home of Edith Wharton, closed to the public so Trust members could have free-rein through the house to explore the architecture, room designs, views and amazing restoration. They are currently celebrating the return of Wharton’s library, further making The Mount a repository of Wharton’s design and influence. The restoration of the gardens brings back the formal garden parts (i.e. circular pool, sunken garden, pleached lime walk, etc., near the house) and views of a natural lake beyond.

Trust members Stephanie and Bill Reeves from Atlanta, talk with Bennington Museum Curator Jamie Franklin (right) who opened our visit on Thursday with a collection orientation lecture. He noted that Bennington Pottery by the Norton Family is often confused with Rockingham Pottery. Bennington Stoneware, Rockingham and Parian were on view at the museum. It was the excellent clay deposits in Vermont that moved Julius and Edward Norton from redware to stoneware and most of their pieces were made to store and serve food and beverage. But it is the specialty pieces like the highly decorated water cooler in their collection that are the most exciting. Franklin says, happily, the water cooler could be the best piece of stoneware in America! We also saw examples from the U.S. Pottery Company where the Flinton enamel glaze of brown, yellow and orange was so distinctive. It was used on the popular small statues of cows, deer, dogs and lions. Parian ware was also on display. Its look of carved marble made it popular for neoclassical interiors. The U. S. Pottery Company exhibited at the 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition and got tremendous orders but went out of business five years later. The Bennington Museum staged the first ever exhibition to examine Vermont Furniture in 1995 and now has renovated galleries for this collection. Franklin noted that from 1790 through the first two decades of the 19th century Vermont enjoyed a boom time. A tip on looking at Vermont furniture: the drawer liners are often cherry wood rather than poplar.

Saturday we lunched at the Lenox Club where one of our members found a portrait of his grandfather, a past president of the Club. Afterwards Trust members were given an exclusive tour of a very important carriage collection at Orleton, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Waller. Focusing on the tremendous importance of horse and carriage transportation, Trust members saw road coaches, private coaches, roof seat breaks, gigs, phaetons, sleighs, etc., and learned the function and technology of each.
This area of material culture and decorative arts is wisely becoming more in evidence at museums in America and Europe. Hancock Shaker Village greeted us kindly as the sun was low and the rain clouds gathered. As usual hearty Trust members dashed out to see the round barn after a most interesting lecture on Shaker objects by curator Christian Goodwillie. A traditional Shaker dinner was served by candlelight in the 1830s Brick Dwelling, followed by dividing Trust members into male and female groups in the assembly room for songs. The entire visit was magical.

Speakers Pauline Metcalf and Betsy Anderson introduced The Mount and its gardens. Metcalf mentioned that John Cornforth, British historian, thought that house decoration as known today was started with Edith Wharton’s book, The Decoration of Houses. Her trips to Europe informed her ideas of decoration. In 1896 Wharton brought toiles de Jouy from France and used it extensively, starting a style that is still popular today.

The Mission House, c. 1739, was relocated, restored and furnished by Mabel Choate in honor of her parents. Furnishings came from Israel Sack when his shop was in Boston. Susan Edwards, Director of Historic Resources for The Trustees of Reservations, had shown us numerous bills of sale regarding transactions with Sack, other dealers and private purchases made by Choate during the furnishing. Walking through the house then became even more interesting.

Naumkeag, the Choate house, is a wonderful meandering retreat. Entering the front door you face a huge window framing a magnificent mountain view as if to exclaim, “This is why we are here!” Everything is in place as Choate left it, down to the linens in the closet. Research continues, and must be a labor of great joy, since the house is filled with numerous collections and influences. The oriental gardens ring the house, and the blue stairs descend the bank below the house opening to that glorious view.

Entrance alcove at Naumkeag

Lastly, on this Sunday Trust members visited the Norman Rockwell Museum, which Stephanie Plunkett explained is a museum of American illustration. With the growth of literacy and American industry from the second half of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th, illustrated periodicals enjoyed a golden age. There were 700 in 1863 and more than 5,000 in 1900, making a golden age of American illustration. A good deal of the work was for advertising; and as advertising went to television it brought an end to the big magazine era. Rockwell lived in Stockbridge for his last 25 years. Plunkett noted that he used about 13 different signatures, choosing the one appropriate for the picture. His grandfather was Howard Hill, the itinerant English painter of animals and barnyards scenes. At the museum we saw Rockwell’s four liberties — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The starkly portrayed small-town view of these freedoms touched us all as we departed for home, the elections and Thanksgiving.

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