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.