Donald R. Friary
Fifty Years of Collecting for Historic Deerfield - Part 2
Objects of high quality with a direct link to Deerfield’s history have appeared with remarkable frequency in the marketplace and in the possession of devoted descendants of
Deerfield. Elizabeth Shaw Williams proudly presented a large Staffordshire platter with blue transfer-printed decoration showing "A WINTER VIEW OF PITTSFIELD, MASS." (Fig. 4)That had descended to her from the Childs family of the Wapping section of Deerfield. Alluding to its mint condition, she said emphatically, "No one ever carved a roast on this!" This Pittsfield Elm platter had been prized as a decorative object through several generations of a Deerfield family.
The Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework that flourished from 1896 to mid-1920s had produced for sale, largely to tourists, hundreds of doilies, table mats, wall hangings, and bed curtains. By the late 20 th century, daughters and granddaughters of the original embroiderers and purchasers began to give them to Historic Deerfield. The eagle eye of Washington resident Lee Magnuson, who had been a student years before in Historic Deerfield’s Summer Fellowship Program for undergraduates, spotted four table mats in a Georgetown thrift shop, bought them, and some years later, gave them to Historic Deerfield.
The Deerfield collection was enhanced in 1960, when two significant collections of American antiques were added to the Flynts’. The children of George Alfred Cluett of Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, placed on loan their late father’s extraordinary collection of furniture, acquired between 1910 and 1938. Among Mr. Cluett’s prizes was a rolltop lady’s desk attributed to John and Thomas Seymour. It was bequeathed to Historic Deerfield by Edith Cluett Walker in 1985. It is shown with 89 other pieces from the Cluett Collection in the 1824 Wright House. Also in 1960, Rowena Russell Potter of Greenfield, Massachusetts, bequeathed to Historic Deerfield a superb collection of New England furniture and other antiques that she had been forming for more than 40 years, both from major New England dealers and in forays to the countryside. She had a particular weakness for Boston blockfront pieces and had found a stunning bureau table or kneehole desk of figured mahogany and white pine.
Restoration of houses continued under the Flynts’ guidance. The 1824 Wright House was completed in 1960 to accommodate the Cluett Collection. The Sheldon- Hawks House, opened to the public in 1957, was ready to receive the Potter Collection in 1960. In the following year a small farmhouse was moved from a site north of the village back to its original location. The Clesson House had been built in 1814 as a gambrell-roofed ell of a future larger house. After Samuel Clesson died in 1816, plans for the house were abandoned. When a subsequent owner decided to build a Victorian dwelling in 1871 the gambrell -roofed structure was moved. The Flynts returned it and added a vault for their Silver Collection. In 1963 the Wells-Thorn House was restored. This was the Flynts’ last historic house restoration and demonstrated a maturation of their views and practices, not only in restoration, but also in collecting and interpretation. It had well conceived period rooms that told the story of change in domestic and economic life in the Connecticut Valley from the 1720s to the 1850s. Finally, in 1965 the Flynts restored an 1871 barn behind the Silver Collection on the Clesson lot. It was called the Helen Grier Flynt Fabric Hall to recognize the extraordinary collection of textiles, needlework, and costume that Mrs. Flynt had formed over the previous two decades. Viewing their restoration as complete, they turned their attention to building an endowment so that their extraordinary collections could be put to appropriate scholarly and educational use.
All the while the Historic Deerfield collection was growing in size and quality. The Flynts followed the lead of their collecting colleagues and searched the marketplace for fine examples of English Delft, Chinese export porcelain, American silver, English and American needlework, pewter, brass and glass. They found four Delft posset pots, two hong bowls, a set of four candlesticks by Thomas Dane of Boston, several framed pieces of stumpwork, a Fishing Lady on Boston Common, many candlesticks and lots of twist- stemmed wine glasses. They filled their own Deerfield home, the Allen House, and furnished, really over furnished, ten museum buildings along the elm-lined village street.
Henry and Helen Flynt’s collecting activity slowed down in the mid-1960s, as they turned their remarkable energy and their resources to building a library and an endowment to assure the future of their beloved Deerfield project. When Henry Flynt died in 1970, the flow of acquisitions was but a trickle. In the ensuing years a mere $1,000 was budgeted for "Purchase of Minor Antiques." Helen Flynt’s active participation at Deerfield ended because of illness in 1974 and the fledgling curatorial staff was limited in its ability to acquire.
As Henry and Helen Flynt’s active years at Historic Deerfield came to a close in the early 1970s, the museum began to experience real change. New board leadership turned the enterprise from a highly personal project to a professional institution. Several staff were added—a Librarian, a Director of Education, a Business Manager, an Executive Director –and efforts were made to draw and serve a wider public. School tours were added, college field visits were encouraged, courses were offered at Smith College and Williams College, lecture series were presented, scholarly colloquia were organized. Historic Deerfield had been a hidden treasure; it was now really opened to the public and made more widely known in the press. Attendance rose and there were many signs of activity along The Street.
A new era in collecting for Historic Deerfield opened in 1976 with the establishment of the Mr. and Mrs. High B. Vanderbilt Fund for Curatorial Acquisitions. The Vanderbilts, longtime friends of the Flynts in Greenwich, Connecticut, saw the need to develop the Historic Deerfield collection and provided the means. Annual gifts enable Historic Deerfield’s professional staff to enter the marketplace. The resulting acquisitions made known to dealers, auctioneers, and collectors that Historic Deerfield was a growing institution that would buy at shops and shows and auctions and would accept gifts of objects and of cash. In the 1980s two funds were established by Hall and Kate Peterson, one for paintings, prints, drawings and photographs and the other for "Minor Antiques". The growth of the Historic Deerfield collection has also benefited significantly from the Museum Collections Fund established in 1981 with the proceeds of deaccessioning from the museum collection. At the urging of Curator Peter Spang, the Trustees adopted a Museum Acquisitions Policy, to define the collection, and a Museum Deaccessioning Policy that established procedures for disposing of surplus objects. The Museum Collections Fund has made possible the purchase of major acquisitions.
With their newfound ability to collect, the museum staff began to search the marketplace and to seek gifts with two objectives: (1) to find objects directly related to the history of Deerfield, and (2), to fill gaps in the already strong collection entrusted to them. Sometimes both objectives were met with a single object. In 1979 a "Boston chair" was purchased from Israel Sack. These leather upholstered William and Mary chairs had been common in the 18th century, many produced for export to other English colonies. However, one had never been found for the Historic Deerfield collection. This one was especially attractive, because it had belonged to a signer of the Declaration of Independence, William Williams of Lebanon, Connecticut. This sort of association always enticed Henry Flynt. William Williams was the nephew of Dorothy Williams Ashley of Deerfield, wife of the town’s Tory parson. The quality of the chair, its historical association, its Deerfield connection, and the ironic educational value of showing a Patriot’s chair in the home of his Tory aunt and uncle made it a perfect continuation of the Flynt’s collecting tradition.
The Deerfield staff was always alert for relics of Deerfield’s past – marking samplers, a canvas cot, a minister’s hourglass, a shelf clock, Windsor chairs, Whately stoneware crocks and jugs, and products of Deerfield’s Arts & Crafts movement. They liked especially objects with a story to tell. A brass dog collar inscribed " Jere Stebbin Esq’s Dog W. Springfield/Who Dog be you" alluded to Alexander Pope’s couplet about His Majesty’s dog at Kew. A joined chest of drawers, c1720, that had been found on a porch in South Hadley was decorated with swirls of black paint over red to simulate the burl walnut veneer fashionable in Boston at that time; a country craftsman had seen urban sophistication and decided to emulate it. A "Deerfield chair," one of those banister-back chairs with cyma-curved crest rail and spool finials that have been found so often in the Deerfield area, was predictably in the hands of a Deerfield descendant. This one was different. On the crest rail was engraved the owner’s vital statistics, "EUNICE ALLEN/ BORN JUNE 6 1733 /TOMAHAWKED AUG. 25 1746 /DIED AUG. 16 1818." Eunice Allen had been a victim of the last Indian attack on Deerfield, the Bars Fight in 1746. Scalped and left for dead, she miraculously survived and lived in Deerfield for 72 years. Clearly, she had become legendary and a family member memorialized her on her own chair.
This article was originally prepared for and published in the catalogue of the Ellis Antiques Show, October 31 to November 3, 2002
Part 3 coming soon....
