SAPFM 2008 Mid-Year Conference
Furniture Making Education at its Best
As anticipated, this year's mid-year conference was furniture making education at its best. Rockingham Community College hosted the sold-out event, Presenters' Choice, August 8, 9, and 10 on its campus in Wentworth, NC. On Friday, participants were invited to tour Old Salem and the Museum of Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA). The staff at MESDA gave SAPFM a warm welcome and unprecedented access to many of the pieces in its extensive collection. Conference check-in on Friday evening was followed by opening remarks by SAPFM president, Mickey Callahan, and by the director of Rockingham's program in Fine and Creative Woodworking, Mike Quinn. More than 20 pieces, made by attendees and RCC students, were displayed in the conference facility. Read more.
Summer Exhibits of Interest to SAPFM Members
From Virginia to Vermont is showing at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery of American Furniture. This exhibition highlights pieces from three regions: Eastern Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New England. While early furniture forms and styles from these areas were similar during the late 17th through the early 19th centuries, the interpretation and the popularity of designs varied due to differences in local economies, trade settlement patterns, and the religious and cultural backgrounds of the inhabitants. A section on painted furniture further demonstrates regional styles and decorative influences. While you are there, be sure to see Exciting Expressions: Painted Furniture at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum. This exhibition displays case pieces, chairs and boxes that have been embellished with decorative treatments. Plain wooden pieces were made more lively and interesting with color, pattern and designs.
At
Historic Deerfield, visit
Into the Woods: Crafting Early American Furniture. Drawing on 60 examples of furniture from Historic Deerfield's permanent collection--including masterworks by Duncan Phyfe, Samuel McIntyre, and others -- this new exhibition offers an accessible and imaginative format for audiences to learn about the raw materials, tools, hand skills, designs and ornamental techniques that woodworkers used between 1675 and 1840. A wide array of furniture forms from tables and chairs to clocks and looking glasses have been assembled by Curator of Furniture Joshua Lane using innovative "exploded view" display techniques and before and after views of conservation treatments. This long-term exhibition, with changing elements, will be on view through 2013.
Historic New England is offering a tour highlighting Portsmouth-made furniture at the Rundlet-May House in Portsmouth, NH. Learn about the Federal style furniture and decorative techniques that were popular when the house was built in 1807. The tour explores the boom of the economy and prosperity at the turn of the nineteenth century in Portsmouth, to the decline during the Jefferson Embargo and War of 1812.