REVISITING THE COLONIAL REVIVAL - “A Delightful Form of Madness”: Amer. Textiles & the Colonial Rev

Date: 1/7/2007
Location: Phelps Tavern Museum/Simsbury Historical Society
800 Hopmeadow Street Simsbury, CT 06070
Hours: 2 PM; Admission: $6.00
Contact: (860) 658-2500
Sponsor: Phelps Tavern Museum/Simsbury Historical Society

Joshua Ruff, F. Henry Berlin History Curator at The Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages, will cover the appeal of early American textiles and the contemporary wearing of and the use of colonial patterns in products made from the 1870s to the 1950s. Colonial Revival in the United States was at its height from the Philadelphia Centennial through the Depression as Americans began to romanticize their past to fit a future that included changing gender roles, immigrants, urban living and rapidly advancing technology. As in many New England towns, previously ignored homesteads in Simsbury were purchased and restored architecturally and decoratively as touchstones to an imagined past. It is the strong Colonial Revival presence in Simsbury that inspired this year’s theme.