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The Blog of Historic Deerfield
Bored with your daily routine? Are you in a Netflix binging rut? Turn off your devices and dust off your chess set, play a game of checkers or mancala, crack open a dictionary and look for new words for a scrabble match, or teach yourself how to play a favorite old tavern game like table-top nine pins, shut the box, nine men’s morris, or fox and geese.This Monday we’re encouraging you play board games and to create your own.
Enslavers regularly placed “Run Away” advertisements in 18th-century American newspapers when their human “property” attempted to escape a life of perpetual bondage. Such ads are a powerful tool for present-day researchers documenting resistance to slavery. They also offer glimpses of individual enslaved people as they appeared to white contemporaries. Despite their inherent bias, run-away ads are thus an important source that can help us to better understand the clothing and appearance of historically under-represented people living in 18th-century New England.
In the latest blog to this ongoing series, David Bruce Smith explores the Adamses love lives and their positions on slavery.
This Monday, we are going to show you how to make dolls using corn husks. Popularly known as “Corn Husk Dolls,” we are presenting our own adaptation of a traditional Native American craft. Corn husk dolls have been, and are still, crafted world-wide by just about every culture that grows corn.
This Monday we’re encouraging you to create your own paper powder horn. We will show you some examples from The William H. Guthman Collection of American Powder Horns at Historic Deerfield, offer a brief description of how a powder horn is made, and then guide you in making your own paper powder horn.
Timekeeping is the measurement of elapsing time. Humans are drawn to timekeeping “up to the minute” because we are self-important with “no time to waste” and because we are driven to master our surroundings through the manipulation of machinery.
This Monday we’re encouraging you to create your own commemorative plate. See examples in the Historic Deerfield collection and learn step by step how to make your own.
In this third post of our blog about Abigail and John Adams, author David Bruce Smith explores the Adams’s time abroad, and their changing relationship with Thomas Jefferson.
Learn about the historic art form of quilling. See an example of quilled art from the collection, and learn how to make your own quilled shapes and pictures.
This week’s Maker Monday project comes from a suggestion made by Amanda Lange, Curatorial Department Chair. We have a small wooden box, beautifully decorated with paint and paper cut-outs in our collection. This box represents an art form called decoupage. We thought you would enjoy learning about it and trying to decorate your own special box at home.
This Monday we have adapted an activity from a garden program that we have offered at Historic Deerfield during previous Junes. At the History Workshop, we have a teaching garden. Every year we feature plants like flax, broom corn, herbs and vegetables that support our interpretive programs.
Every object has multiple meanings. Usually these need to be discerned or discovered—there’s the obvious meaning of what an object is and how it was used as well as the layers of secret meanings with which people endow the objects in their lives.
Unusually, this chair makes that process blatant.
Chairs are for sitting; spinning wheels for spinning fibers. Not anymore. Now spinning wheels are for sitting—and for an ideological respite at that.
HIstoric Deerfield joins arm in arm with all seeking justice and peace of mind. Please read a message from our President in Memory of George Floyd.
This Monday we have something a little different for you. It is an activity that comes from a popular program we have offered called “All About Tea,” where we like to offer visitors the opportunity to sit and enjoy teatime. So today, we want to offer you a virtual tea party!
In this second post of our blog about Abigail and John Adams, author David Bruce Smith explores the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
Americans practiced the art of stenciling extensively during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Learn the history of stencil art, and how to make your own stencil and bookmark in this activity.
Historic Deerfield, Inc., announced today that its President and Chief Executive Officer, Philip Zea, intends to step down and retire in the Spring of 2021. Zea has led Historic Deerfield since 2003. He also served Historic Deerfield for 18 years earlier in his career, from 1981 to 1999, concluding as Deputy Director and Chief Curator.
We have so appreciated your response to our Maker Mondays Blog and have enjoyed the emails and photos you have sent us. From your feedback, we know that our Butter and Biscuit blog was a favorite so we thought we would offer another baking project. This one is a cake recipe that comes from a book published in 1829.
Last week we explained how to make a journal. We hope you were successful and had fun: maybe you have started writing, drawing or making notes in your journal. This Maker Monday we would like to introduce you to some ideas about journal keeping.
This is the first part of a continuing series of blog posts with author David Bruce Smith about Abigail and John Adams. Historic Deerfield’s resident historians will pose questions to Smith, who is the author of Abigail & John …