Style and Fashion

Between 1941 and 1955, the Folly Cove Designers participated in 16 museum exhibitions. They also supplied designs to a number of well known wholesalers and retailers including Lord & Taylor, F. Schumacher, Rich's of Atlanta and Skinner Silks. In 1948 the Designers expanded their operations into a barn owned by the Demetrios family in Folly Cove. The barn was open from August 1 through Labor Day for demonstrations and sales. In 1959, the season was extended from early March through December. Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios died in 1968; within one year, the Folly Cove Designers ceased operations. As a group, they agreed to stop selling their designs under the name Folly Cove Designers and in 1970 they donated their sample books, prints and remnants to the Cape Ann Museum. Since that time, the Museum's Folly Cove Collection has continued to grow, becoming the single largest repository of work by this talented group of individuals. more »

A few years ago as I was strolling through the china department of a local department store, I came across a dining table display that set me to giggling. The linens, china, crystal and silver were all quite elegant and carefully coordinated. The flower arrangement was a stunner. What set me off was the sight of twelve perfectly matched napkin rings, each correctly placed on the napkin to the left of the forks. The fad for matched napkin rings has grown since then, and nowadays even the catalogues feature such sets. Excuse me, but doesn't anybody in this modern generation realize why we had napkin rings in the old days?   more »

In an effort to share library holdings with people who cannot come to Winterthur in northern New Castle County, Delaware as well as to respond to onsite users, library staff has selected a number of collections to digitize. Choosing to represent library strengths and materials frequently requested by researchers, we have scanned dozens of collections and thousands of images and offer them online. more »

With work-from-home (still) in full swing, are you finding your quarantine quarters a little lacking? Do you dread logging into the morning meeting, coveting your colleagues’ digs while you slump at your desk seemingly made of Legos and leftover Ikea hardware? Yes, the ideal home office is the new status symbol, and Mia is here to help with Zoom-ready rooms straight from the galleries. Who wouldn’t want to brainstorm in the Studio of Gratifying Discourse? Or file those TPS reports from the sunny table in Pierre Bonnard’s Dining Room in the Country? more »