Honoring Folk Art: The Shelburne Museum

If you love that which is handmade, homemade, made with love, you are probably drawn to collections of folk art.  There are lots of people, however, who turn their noses up at items made by untrained makers and at “craft,” in general.

The wealthy parents of Electra Havemeyer Webb were just those kinds of people. They collected “real” art of Europe and Asia and brought their daughter up to appreciate the best of the best.

Electra Havemeyer Webb

But what Electra thought was best didn’t follow her parents’ tastes. Electra was drawn to art in unusual places. In the early 1900s, this pioneer collected American quilts and samplers. Figureheads of ships. Decoys and advertising art. And historic New England structures that she had brought to the museum she founded, the Shelburne Museum.

This fine museum of folk art and Americana is the Shelburne Museum, located just south of Burlington, Vermont.

The museum is made up of the 18^th and 19^th century buildings that Electra found and had moved to the museum grounds. These buildings, as well as more traditional galleries, serve as home to the thousands of items in the collection.

Today, at the Shelburne Museum “impressionist paintings, folk art, quilts and textiles, decorative arts, furniture, American paintings, and a dazzling array of 17th-to 20th-century artifacts are on view.”

If you visit New England, and there are dozens of excellent reasons to do so, treat yourself to a visit to Shelburne Museum. Go in the summer or fall, when the whole museum is open and you can wander the campus and spend time. You’ll be amazed at the art you see there, both old and new:

Folk Art

The buildings themselves are beautiful examples of craftsmanship and the range of folk art is stunning.

Iconic round barn

Shelburne grounds

Another classic barn

The Webb name on a weathervane

Many weathervanes

Weathervanes

Decoy

Ship weathervane

Fox and hound weathervane

Figurehead for a ship

Centaur weathervane

Textiles

The museum has more than 400 early quilts, as well as hooked rugs, coverlets and samplers.

Patty Yoder hooked rug

A poor photo of a fab Amish quilt

Quilt close-up–made by a man!

1823 sampler

Made by a 9-year-old

Dozens of coverlets

This current exhibit features the work of John Bisbee, a Maine artist who makes all of his work with nothing but 12-inch nails!

Seed 2013

Hearsay 2013

Interior of Hearsay

Hearsay, throwing shadows

Pinwheel 2014

Pinwheel close-up

Floresco 2014

The other current exhibit combines old glass from the museum collection with newer pieces by contemporary artists.

The antique glass

Trompe l’oeil painting of the glass

Wall of antique bottles

Prosthetic eyeballs!

Handblown bull’s eye window panes