Enfilade

In January at Colonial Williamsburg. . .

Working Wood in the 18th Century: Dining in Style
Colonial Williamsburg, 19–22 and 23–26 January 2014

William Buckland (designer) and William Bernard Sears (carver), sideboard made for the Tayloe family of Mount Airy plantation (MESDA collection at Old Salem in Winston Salem, North Carolina). Photo from the Williamsburg blog  Anthony Hay’s, Cabinetmaker; click on the image for more information.

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Colonial Williamsburg, The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), and Fine Woodworking
present the 16th annual Working Wood in the 18th Century conference at Williamsburg, January 19–22 and 23–26, 2014. Projects and presentations will explore the design and construction of dining room furniture, based on original pieces selected from the collections of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The pieces to be built cover a range of complexities. Colonial Williamsburg’s Hay Shop staff will reproduce one of the icons of Virginia and southern high-style furniture, the elaborate sideboard table made by William Buckland and William Bernard Sears for the Tayloe family of Mount Airy plantation. The Hay Shop also will make a turned, gate-leg, walnut table, based on the earliest southern gate-leg table known. Steve Latta will demonstrate constructing and decorating a veneered and inlaid, Winchester, Virginia, sideboard. Brian Coe of Old Salem will produce a corner cupboard from the Davidson County, North Carolina, Swisegood school of cabinetmakers. Colonial Williamsburg joiner Ted Boscana will complement Brian’s presentation with a joiner-made, paneled cupboard from the Virginia Eastern Shore. And, Robert Leath, MESDA’s chief curator (first session), and Daniel Ackermann, MESDA’s associate curator (second session), will start things off with an introduction to dining rooms and their furnishings. Partnering with MESDA gives us a chance to focus on southern regional styles and construction, a theme of the new “Masterworks” gallery being installed in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. Yet, the overall form and decoration of these pieces, whether Baroque in inspiration—drawn directly from Chippendale—or inspired by neo-classical taste, offer approaches and detailing applicable to many examples of Anglo-American furniture made throughout the 18th and into the early 19th centuries.

As last year, Session One runs Sunday through Wednesday and Session Two Thursday through Sunday.

Speakers Include

Daniel Ackermann, associate curator, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Old Salem, Winston-
Salem, North Carolina
Ted Boscana, supervisor, journeyman joiner and carpenter, Colonial Williamsburg
Brian Coe, director of exhibition buildings and furniture maker, Old Salem, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Steve Latta, educator and craftsman, Thaddeus Stevens College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and contributing
editor, Fine Woodworking magazine
Robert Leath, chief curator and vice president of collections and research for the Museum of Early Southern
Decorative Arts, Old Salem, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Kaare Loftheim, journeyman cabinetmaker, Colonial Williamsburg
Bill Pavlak, apprentice cabinetmaker, Colonial Williamsburg
Brian Weldy, apprentice cabinetmaker, Colonial Williamsburg

As always, the conference will be informal. Participants’ comments and questions are welcomed. During morning and afternoon breaks, speakers display their work, tools, and materials; demonstrate techniques; and chat with participants. To include more participants while keeping the conferences small enough for everyone to be involved, two identical programs are offered.

More information is available here»

From Colonial Willamsburg:

Painters and Paintings in the Early American South
Colonial Williamsburg, 3–5 November 2013

Robert Feke, Portrait of William Nelson, 1749–51
(Colonial Williamsburg)

The groundbreaking exhibition Painters and Paintings in the Early American South opened March 23, 2013 at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. The exhibition is the first of its kind to explore in-depth the scope of early art in this region and the myriad connections between art and artists of the early South, New England, the Middle Atlantic, and Europe. It features more than 80 works created in or for the South between 1735 and 1800, 40 of which are on loan from well-known and respected museums and private collections. Painters and Paintings in the Early American South is made possible by generous support from The Grainger Foundation of Lake Forest, Illinois. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation will sponsor a symposium November 3–5, 2013, featuring lectures on the painters who created the objects and the people they depicted. Speakers will include Graham Hood, Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator Emeritus, Colonial Williamsburg; Ellen G. Miles, curator emerita, Department of Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; Angela Mack, executive director and chief curator, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; and Maurie D. McInnis, vice provost for academic affairs and professor of art history, University of Virginia. The conference begins with a keynote lecture and reception Sunday evening followed by two days of lectures, Monday and Tuesday. We are offering a discounted student rate of $250 to qualifying full-time students. For more information on the event and/or to register, please visit the symposium website.

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S U N D A Y ,  3  N O V E M B E R  2 0 1 3

5:00  Keynote address, Introduction to the Theme, by Graham Hood, Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator Emeritus, Colonial Williamsburg

6:00  Reception

M O N D A Y ,  4  N O V E M B E R  2 0 1 3

9:00  Welcome and opening remarks, Ronald L. Hurst, vice president, collections, conservation, and museums, and Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator, Colonial Williamsburg

The Social and Cultural Importance of Painting in the South, Maurie D. McInnis, vice provost for academic affairs and professor of art history, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Charlestonians Abroad: Painters and Paintings in the Carolina Low Country, Angela Mack, executive director and chief curator, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina.

10:45  Coffee break

11:15  Back in the Day: The Mystery Behind the Watercolor of Drayton Hall, Matthew Webster, director, historic architectural resources, Colonial Williamsburg

John Drayton’s Watercolors, Margaret Pritchard, senior curator, and curator of prints, maps, and wallpaper, Colonial Williamsburg

Jeremiah Theus: A Swiss Artist in Colonial Charleston, Laura Pass Barry, Juli Grainger curator of paintings, drawings, and sculpture, Colonial Williamsburg

12:00  Lunch break

1:30  Degrees of Separation: English Portraiture and the American South, Ellen G. Miles, curator emerita, Department of Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

2:15  Wollaston and Hesselius: Their Art and Influence in the Early South, Carolyn J. Weekley, Juli Grainger Curator Emerita, Colonial Williamsburg

3:00  Robert Feke, William Dering, and Other Case Studies in the Conservation of Early Southern Art, Shelley Svoboda, paintings conservator, Colonial Williamsburg

4:00  Gallery tours with curators and conservators in exhibition.

T U E S D A Y ,  5  N O V E M B E R  2 0 1 3

8:30  Thomas Coram: Charleston’s Earliest Landscape Artist, Sara Arnold, curator of collections, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina

Charles Willson Peale in Maryland and Virginia, Carol Soltis, project associate curator, Peale Collection Catalog, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Southern Synergy: The Philadelphia – Charleston Connection, Elle Shushan, Elle Shushan Fine Portrait Miniatures, Philadelphia

10:15  Coffee break

10:45  Early Virginia Paintings at the Virginia Historical Society, William M. S. Rasmussen, lead curator and Lora M. Robins Curator, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond

John Durand: His Origins Revealed, Carolyn J. Weekley

Frederick Kemmelmeyer: From Hessian Soldier to American Artist, Arthur Nicholas Powers, fellow, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, Winterthur, Delaware

12:00  Lunch break

1:30  Early Portraiture in the South and the West Indies, Katelyn Crawford, doctoral candidate, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza and the Visual Culture of Spanish Colonial New Orleans, Cybèle Gontar, doctoral candidate in American art, Graduate Center, City University of New York

3:00  Coffee break

3:30  Art Collecting in Virginia and Maryland, 1790–1830: Expectations and Aspirations, Lance Humphries, independent scholar, Baltimore, Maryland

Southern Culture: Where Scholarship is Heading, Robert Leath, chief curator and vice president, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina