Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Inside Winterthur. Part 10.

Keep up with XKT and Rosie on our tour of the du Pont estates. Longwood Gardens - Part 1 Longwood Gardens - Part 2 Longwood Gardens - Part 3 Longwood Gardens - Part 4 Longwood Gardens - Part 5 Longwood Gardens - Part 6 Longwood Gardens - Part 7 Longwood Gardens - Part 8 Wintertour Gardens - Part 9 More than 50 years ago, collector and horitculturalist Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969) opened his childhood home, Winterthur, to the public. Today the exhibition galleries and 175 rooms showcase nearly 85,000 arts objects, all set within a magnificent 100-acre estate and garden.
This is a still.
This cabinet is the piece that started the entire collection. du Pont saw it in Electra Havermeyer Webb's collection when he went to Shelburne, VT to look at cows. She willed it to the Winterthur estate.
This is the Chinese Parlor which serves as a showcase for some extraordinary 18th century Chinese wallpaper depicting scenes of village life. The room contains 30 pieces of furniture from different regions of colonial America.
The stairway is from an 1822 plantation home in North Carolina which du Pont purchased at auction. He adapted the circular staircase for Winterthur.
This room is set for a child's birthday party.
That's a pile of sawdust with little surprises inside.
The highlight of any weekend visit to Winterthur was the dinner presentation. The table was always set with bouquets, color-coordinated linens specially chosen to match the seasonal flowers, and elaborate dinnerware, glassware, and silverware. Across the table conversation was discouraged. One was expected to concentrate solely on one's dinner partner on the left for a certain amount of time, then switch to the dinner partner on the right.
This is a knife holder. The ivory ends of the knives were painted green to look like jade.
This set of 6 tankards was made by Paul Revere and is the only known set. They are priceless.
Cock fighting spurs.

1 comment:

Marilyn said...

I see you got to parts of the museum that I had to skip due to time constraints. Very interesting.