When most people think of Iman, they think of God, and they think of God, and they think
of endless miles of scenic beauty. But a pioneering collector of Americana, Electra Havemeyer-Webb,
was continually searching the countryside for beauty of a different kind.
One of Electra's Vermont friends usually negotiated with a local townsman or farmer, and as a
result, one more proud addition to Electra's collection would be unveiled.
This copper cow would become one of 200,000 folk art pieces, which eventually would fill
37 buildings and become the world-renowned Shelburne Museum of Vermont.
Now, let's take a look at some of the works of Electra Havemeyer-Webb.
Born in 1888, Electra Havemeyer-Webb was the daughter of Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer,
two of America's pioneering art collectors. Electra's father had amassed a great fortune
as head of the American Sugar Refining Company. This allowed for a lavish lifestyle with all
the 19th century trimmings, including a mansion on New York's Fifth Avenue with interiors
by Louis Comfort Tiffany. As world travelers, Electra's parents made
repeated voyages to Europe, often in search of great works of art. Art collecting gradually
became a major preoccupation, especially with Louisine. The extraordinary Havemeyer collection
eventually included works by Rembrandt, Manet, El Greco, Degas, as well as hundreds of paintings
by other masters. Electra, shown here with her mother in a portrait by Mary Cassatt,
literally grew up surrounded by art treasures. It was no real surprise to her parents when
she began collecting at a very young age. Electra received her first dolls from her
maternal grandmother. Rather than play with them, she began collecting them, eventually
owning over 1,000 dolls. But dolls, as it turned out, were only the beginning. As Electra
grew older, she began developing very independent ideas about art and collecting, much to her
parents' surprise. By the time Electra Webb was 18, she had purchased
her first cigar store, Indium. In time, one wooden chief had become a whole tribe. Years
later, Electra often quoted her mother's remarks concerning her new collecting interests.
The sharpest rebuke Electra recalled was when her mother, Louisine Havemeyer, asked one
day, how can you, who have been brought up with Rembrandts and Manets, collect and live
with such American trash?
The unique viewpoint that we find in Electra's choices of objects certainly was in contrast
to her mother's viewpoint. And that brings us to the question of individual taste.
Electra wasn't abandoning her cultural heritage. She was enlarging upon it. For example, she
may have acquired her love of pattern from the many Tiffany designs in her childhood
home. She later chose to collect other patterns in the form of American quilts.
The many dagas in the Havemeyer collection almost certainly enhanced her appreciation
for the harmony and balance of well-defined shapes. Electra's interests principally centered
on objects made for utilitarian reasons, but fashioned in a unique or beautiful manner.
This weathervane is a superb example.
By the 1940s, Electra began creating a way to display her collections. She bought up
old dilapidated structures and had them moved to Shelburne. To her, these buildings were
folk art in themselves, the perfect way to house her collections. Often the buildings
had to be numbered piece by piece for dismantling, then later reassembled at Shelburne. Other
old buildings were moved intact right through the middle of Shelburne Village. By the mid-50s,
Electra purchased and relocated dozens of buildings, not to mention a 900-ton side wheeler
as well. Electra's museum would truly become one of a kind.
Today this collection of 37 buildings is spread over 45 acres, now known as the Shelburne
Museum. Each building is a virtual jewel box containing its own array of fascinating objects.
One such building, the Tuckaway General Store, was moved here in 1952. Electra then filled
a floor-to-ceiling with artifacts from America's past.
Almost anything could be found in a general store. It was a cozy setting featuring a variety
of foods, tools, clothing, and sundries, filling every square inch of the store's interior.
The items in this particular building were all purchased from one Massachusetts general
store, making the assemblies truly authentic. In this same building, Electra added an apothecary
shop, complete with hundreds of bottled elixirs promising cures for everything from tired
blood to the sound of distant waterfalls in the ears.
The Vermont House was elegantly furnished by Electra to simulate the home of a well-to-do
sea captain.
The wallpaper, dating from 1800, was brought from a tavern wall in France. Fine examples
of waterford crystal are among other elements that Electra Webb chose from different periods
to form a beautiful and pleasing setting.
In contrast to the refined elegance of the Vermont House is the charming simplicity of
the sawyer's cabin. Brought from Charlotte, Vermont, it was the home of a woodcutter who
very likely carved his family's possessions from wood out of the surrounding forest.
Perhaps by the globe candlelight, a loving father whittled toys to amuse his children.
Sawyer's cabin was one of Electra's favorite interiors because it represented what she
called simplicity, the simplicity of a handmade environment.
Early in our country's history, most things from houses to toys were made by hand. Since
this is no longer true, we attach a special value to something that is labeled handmade.
A handmade object is as unique as the individual who created it. The word handmade suggests
something made with special care, such as this child's rocking chair, carved in 1860.
Before the machine age, all objects were handmade, such as this forerunner of the tricycle operated
by hand cranks. These decoys, among the nearly 1,000 in the Shelburne collection, are today
considered fine pieces of freestanding sculpture. Originally, of course, decoys were made for
very practical reasons. Early hunters had learned from the American Indians how to lure
ducks and other waterfowl into an area using wooden decoys. It was important that the decoy
be convincing, and so an art form was born. Today, these elegant wooden creatures, with
their clarity of form and authentic detail, are prized by individual collectors.
The Shelburne collection of decoys is the most extensive in the world. Hunters on a
grander scale, New England whalers, made some of the most intricate works in the collection
at Shelburne. Virtually exiled at sea on whaling expeditions lasting three to five years, sailors
carved whale bone, or teeth, into gifts for loved ones back home. These remarkable creations
came to be known as scrimshaw. Pie crimpers made in this unique art form were used by
loved ones back home to decorate pies and pastries.
Oftentimes, the scrimshaw carving was the end product of a sailor's breathtaking voyage
of imagination. This ingenious device, called a swift, was
made to wind yarn. Long ago, a sailor used his lonely months at sea to make this object
of spectacular beauty. Perhaps no object at the Shelburne Museum so clearly blends both
art and function as does this jacquard loom. Intricate textile designs were finally made
possible with its invention in 1790. The most revolutionary aspect of the jacquard
loom is that it is considered the forerunner of the modern computer.
First the weaver steps on a foot pedal which turns a wheel that is attached to a camshaft.
This advances a punch card program so that the next punch card can be read by a grid
of pins. As the pins go into the card's holes, one more line of the fabric's design is determined,
for at this point, each pin that reads a hole is triggered to pull up a thread of the fabric
being woven. This selective process renders a gap of white
threads which allows a wooden shuttle to carry a colored thread, in this case red, through
the gap. The pre-programmed design emerges line by
line as the red thread is made either visible on top of the white threads or hidden beneath
them. As a result, we see a massive use of the binary
system established nearly 200 years ago, an impressive example of ingenuity, utility and
beauty in American folk art. This one-room New England schoolhouse constructed
in 1830 was purchased in 1947 and moved piece by piece to Shelburne.
Originally built by General Samuel Strong, he had rented the building to the town of
Virgins, Vermont, for one kernel of Indian maize per year.
In this one-room schoolhouse, children received instruction spanning many different grade
levels. The children were taught how to read, how to
read, and how to write. One of the more striking wall pieces in the
school room is this patriotic image. Seen from different angles, it reveals Presidents
Grant, Jackson and Lincoln. Generations of village children learned to
read as they quoted popular aphorisms of the time.
These same concise statements of principle were also enjoyed by Electra. A favorite of
hers, often used by her father, became the Shelburne Museum's own motto, Forge Ahead.
In 1955, Electra found a blacksmith and wheelwright shop, which she moved to Shelburne and restored.
In its heyday as a center for repairing and building carriages, the shop was as busy as
an automobile shop is today. Tools and farm equipment were also made here, such as yokes
for oxen. The dawn of the 20th century brought dramatic
changes to the blacksmith trade. Even as blacksmiths were busy forging tools
piece by piece, large foundries began mass producing ironwork.
With the advent of the automobile, the blacksmith shops began to close, signaling not only
the end of the horse and buggy era, but the colorful trade of blacksmithing as well.
Each spring, over 130 horse-drawn vehicles emerged from their protective covering of
muslin sheets. This stunning collection was originally the
property of Electra's father and mother-in-law. Stored away for decades, the vehicles were
offered as a gift to Electra in 1947. Close examination of the vehicles reveals
the high level of design and workmanship practiced by craftsmen of early America.
To move among this vast collection is to return to an era of elegance and style.
No one really had a better eye than Electra Habermeyer Webb when it came to judging the
quality of handmade, antique, early American quilts.
This fabulous and now world-renowned collection numbers nearly 500 pieces. And as with so
many other things, Electra Webb was a connoisseur here too in appreciating these complex designs
and vibrant colors.
The Spectacle of Electra.
The history of the glittering circus parade moving down Main Street is almost gone forever,
but the tradition lives on at the Shelburne Museum.
In 1959, Electra Webb purchased a circus parade model which had been crafted on a scale of
one inch to one foot, the most accurate and extensive replica of its kind anywhere.
Equal to more than two miles of an old-fashioned parade, the model required 30 years of painstaking
handwork by five craftsmen.
The detail throughout the parade model is truly astonishing. These wheels, for example,
measure two inches across.
To house and display properly the collection of 53 bandwagons, tableaus, and cage wagons,
a building was especially designed and constructed at Shelburne.
The resulting horseshoe-shaped structure is 518 feet long, containing a glimpse into the
golden age of the Big Top Circus.
The miniature circus figures and these large carousel animals are a wonderful example of
Electra Webb's constant delight in collecting folk art objects in both a very small and
a very large scale. Here at the Shelburne Museum, one can easily pick out countless
other examples of this delightful kind of contrast.
This hand-stenciled tin train makes an amusing comparison to the enormous Baldwin 220 locomotive
located nearby on the museum grounds.
This kitchen is one of several large interiors that contrast with similar dollhouse settings
where a bowl is only the size of a thimble.
One can find any number of miniature horse-drawn fire trucks as well as life-size fireman's
equipment at the museum.
The greatest juxtaposition of all can be found between this toy wooden steamboat and the
900-ton steam ship, the S.S. Ticonderoga.
The TIE, as she is called, plied the waters of Lake Champlain for many years beginning
in 1906.
In 1953, the TIE was declared unsafe and was on its way to being scrapped, but Electra
made grand plans to save her.
The scheme called for transporting the TIE across two miles of dry land over specially
laid railroad tracks from Shelburne Bay to the Shelburne Museum.
The first step was to dig a gigantic basin and then pump water into it so that the TIE
could be lifted above bay level and floated onto a waiting cradle.
Water was then pumped out and railroad tracks were laid.
The trip had to take place in winter when two to three feet of ground frost could support
the weight of the 900-ton ship.
Then when the TIE was only halfway there, she began to sink in a sea of mud due to an
early spring thaw.
The TIE had to cross this stretch of lowland in one day or face toppling over on her side.
A valiant crew removed tons of mud and a pathway was cleared to move her onward.
The TIE was free, only to face the next obstacle, crossing the tracks of the busy Rutland Railroad.
In the meantime, a basin was being dug for the TIE's new home on the museum grounds.
After 65 days, the Ticonderoga ended her final journey.
Today she is seen in all her glory, restored to prime condition.
One can imagine how the passengers first felt when they saw the lavish interior of the promenade
deck or salon.
Here passengers spent their hours visiting or strolling about or enjoying a moment's
repose.
The simple but elegant steak rooms provided a night's rest for the journey.
Below decks, powerful steam engines propelled the ship, consuming over a ton of coal each
hour.
Here the engineer would control the vast engine system as the Ticonderoga churned through
the water, queen of Lake Champlain.
Today the TIE presides over the Shelburne Museum as a grand symbol of Electra Webb's determination
to preserve American folk art.
Once the private realm of a single individual, Shelburne now belongs to all of us.
Electra herself once posed the question, what is American folk art?
She said, my interpretation is a simple one.
Since the word folk in America means all of us, folk art is that self-expression which
is welled up from the hearts and hands of the people.
Shelburne's collection of collections not only embodies today's enthusiasm for American folk
art, but also the vision of one pioneering collector who taught us how to appreciate
extraordinary objects created by ordinary people.
Thank you.
Thank you.