Restorations and Party Pics

It's been a busy week here at the Museum. Last Saturday was our annual fundraising event, "Sowing the Seeds!", at which 200 people had a (hopefully) great time in a tent at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, enjoying the food, wine, and live and silent auction items. The rain downpour, which seems now daily around here, managed to hold off until about the time everyone was ready to leave and lots of money was raised for Museum operations, every dollar of which is needed! To see some pictures of the event, taken by Jane Feldman, visit our Flickr site.

The four preservation carpentry summer interns from North Bennet Street school continue to do some exciting and detailed work at Mount Lebanon. They have set up a sunny studio in the Brethren's Workshop building, and have restored two Shaker workbenches (not part of the museum collection) to do their hand work. Some of the work they are up to this week included making shutters for the Granary buidling windows; replicating a seemingly simple but very detailed door to the cellar; and repairing the frame, stone wall, and sill plate around that door.

Here are a couple of the replicated gutter straps they have made, all on period hand machines, from sheets of lead-coated copper. The Museum's collaboration with North Bennet Street School this summer, which will also consist of hosting a two-week Timber Frame Construction and Restoration Workshop in August, is being funded by the 1772 Foundation.

A correction from the last post: The Historic American Landscapes Survey being performed by the National Park Service this summer will become part of the Library of Congress collection, not the National Archives. Whoops; sorry about that.

Sowing the Seeds of Summer

Our July at the Museum has started off with a hive of activity at the Museum's property at the North Family, Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. For the past several weeks, three members of the National Park Service--David, Allen, and Andrew-- have been living at the site and documenting the landscape and historic waterworks as part of a Historic American Landscapes Survey project. They are coming up with some amazing research about the site, which will be shared when they are finished at the end of August. The survey results will be used by the Museum for future restorations and management of the site, and will become part of the National Archives collection and as a GIS feature on Google Earth. Even if you have seen the historic site in person, the web content will be an amazing tool for understanding how the village functioned and what it may have looked like in its heyday. I can't claim to understand what they are up to exactly, but a PBS documentary crew coming to film them next week will attempt to explain for all.

Then, last week, our internship program--a collaboration with the North Bennet Street School of Boston--kicked off. Four interns from the school's two-year program in preservation carpentry--Jerome, Bud, Matt, and Sarah-- arrived to live at the Village for two months of work to finish exterior restoration of the 1838 Granary building (pictured to the right and in the woodcut above), all under the supervision of Dave Lanoue's great team. They will be restoring siding, windows, shutters, doors, and the like. They have already made some pretty special historically-accurate gutters using 19th-Century tools and sheets of copper. Look out for the original color scheme of the building to reappear--it is sometimes shocking to see how colorful those Shakers really were. They have set up shop on the main floor of the 1829 Brethren's Workshop, and as part of their work have restored two huge Shaker workbenches (on loan to the Museum as educational tools) as part of their shop.

We are also gearing up for a big celebration this Saturday, July 11--July marks the start of the Museum's sixtieth year! So on Saturday we will set up an enormous tent, and from 5 to 8 will eat, and drink, auction off some fifty-odd fun, unique, and beautiful items. It's called "Sowing the Seeds!" and I hope you will be there to raise a glass to the Shakers. If you have not yet signed up to come, give a call at 518-794-9100 x 220, or email Geoff Miller at miller@shakermuseumandlibrary.org. Here's the view from the tent: