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260 Years, One Family - The Fairbanks House |
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Written By: Helen H. Hill |
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Built in 1637 – or thereabouts – just footsteps away from an Indian Trail that became the Boston Post Road and later was named East Street, Fairbanks House is one of the most important historical attractions in Dedham, Massachusetts. The property is significant not only because it is the oldest surviving wood frame house in North America, but because of its remarkable state of preservation. |
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Country Home of Electra Havemeyer Webb |
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Written By: Randall Decoteau |
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Built in 1847 as a farmhouse on the shores of Lake Champlain, The Brick House was a wedding gift to James Watson Webb and Electra Havemeyer Webb from his parents, Dr. William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb in 1913. Mrs. Webb expanded the house in 1913 and again in 1919, using the New York architectural firm, Cross & Cross, to encompass some 40 rooms. |
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Eighteenth Century Figures - Theater, Dance & Porcelain |
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Written By: Helen H. Hill |
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Lover’s of continental porcelain need to take notice, as a cultural spotlight shines on a single gallery in the Morgan Memorial Building of The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. This jewel box of an exhibition is small in size, but significant and visually stunning. The rationale of the show is to examine the impact of theater and dance on 18th century porcelains and is intended as a counterpoint to the equally agreeable Ballets Russes to Balanchine on view at the museum through January 2, 2005. |
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Quimper Pottery |
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Written By: Adela Meadows |
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Quimper (pronounced kem-pair), located in northwestern France in the province of Brittany, has been a pottery town since the days when the area was part of the Roman Empire. Eventually settled by Celts from what is now Wales, Brittany did not officially become part of France until 1532, relatively late by European standards, and thus, it has retained its Celtic heritage. Today, the town has become virtually synonymous with its pottery. |
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Reflecting Life The Social Origin of Mirrors |
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Written By: John Fiske and Lisa Freeman |
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When Robert Burns wrote these lines he was thinking of character, but had he lived in the early seventeenth century, some 200 years earlier, he would probably have been thinking of appearance. Living as we do in a society of the self and of self-image, it is hard for us to imagine a life in which we could never see ourselves as others see us. A life without mirrors (or photographs, which are another way of seeing oneself) would be for us a life of anxiety. And yet, in Elizabethan England, that was how people lived. |
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The 1795 Giles Warner House at Hardwick Winery |
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Written By: Helen H. Hill |
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Winding rural roads with wonderful old farmsteads are ubiquitous in Massachusetts, and are part of the pleasure of a visit. As I drove north of Ware, Massachusetts past venerable stone walls shaded by massive maples and oaks, I marveled at the old places I passed. When Giles E. Warner built his country center chimney mansion in 1795, it was one of many in and around Hardwick. But, today it is nearly one of a kind. The house was abandoned around 1970 and when the Sameks found it, the windows, interior doors, and a number of architectural elements had been stripped out by vandals. But the house was pure, never having been electrified and still without interior plumbing. |
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The BIG Price Guides: How Good Are They? |
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Written By: Alison Levie |
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In the storehouses of our collected past, the answers to two key questions separate the treasure from the junk: What is it? and What is it worth? For decades, amidst the burgeoning drive to collect, publishers have hurled themselves directly at these questions with the price guide. Perched atop the annual price guide pile are a number of general guides devoted to an astoundingly wide range of antiques and collectibles. |
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The Boston Tea Party |
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Written By: Randall Decoteau |
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By the middle of the 17th century, tea began to arrive in the port of London aboard the East India Company’s ships. The exotic beverage was costly and in the beginning, enjoyed only by the upper classes. At first, the China Drink or Tee, was taken as a major social occasion in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, and was accompanied by fine Chinese porcelains, genteel manners, and rich silver serving pieces. However, within a hundred years, the prices were gradually reduced, and tea became the drink of the masses both at home and in the Colonies. |
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The Magic of the Magic Lantern |
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Written By: Jack Judson |
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First, what is not a magic lantern? It is not the boat-shaped lamp using oil and frequently and erroneously referred to as a magic lantern. Such incorrect references are usually simply a mistake in terminology. |
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The Mark Twain House - A house with soul in Hartford, Connecticut |
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Written By: Randall Decoteau |
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Hartford’s historic Asylum Hill section is a priority destination for those who follow the paths of literary genius, for here is the location of author Mark Twain’s primary residence from 1874 to 1891. These were the years of his greatest productivity, when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. |
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