Ideas

Old Houses: Summer Projects and Craft Shops

Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework Display Room

Customers could consider a range of exquisite Blue and White Society pieces, such as the floral strewn bed set, the Keturah Baldwin design seen above, in one of two salesrooms in the historic Nims House, the family home of the society's co-founder Ellen Miller. Frances and Mary Allen Photograph.

The Perfect Setting for Colonial inspired Crafts

The development of the Deerfield Arts and Crafts movement followed the establishment of Deerfield as a popular colonial heritage site, and soon the successes of each initiative encouraged and supported the fate of the other. Deerfield Arts and Crafts artisans recognized the appeal that customers would find in gazing upon a display of colonial-inspired crafts while taking in the setting of one of the old houses along Deerfield's easily navigable one mile street. In 1905, the readers of The New England Magazine were told just how successful Deerfield's marketing efforts had become, "Ten years ago this little town's chief claim to interest, lay in its associations with some of the most momentous periods of Colonial history....To-day, thousands of visitors find their way through the long, quiet streets; not because of its records of siege and massacre and captives marched off to far off Canada, but because of its present interest and influence as an Arts and Crafts centre."¹

Pauline October Bouve, "The Deerfield Renaissance," New England Magazine, October 1905, 163.