Between Two Worlds

Cyrus Bruce, free man, formerly enslaved, was known for his dapper appearance when he worked at Langdon House in Portsmouth, NH in 1783, yet when artist Richard Haynes embarked on painting his portrait in 2018, no image of Bruce existed.

Haynes created this interpretive portrait of Bruce in an artist's residency and exhibition, A Life in Color: Two Cultural Makers, Centuries Apart at Historic New England’s Langdon House.

“I have the opportunity to capture the image, the portrait of an unknown man and through this, together, we are going to be cultural keepers and makers. We are going to share the black heritage, the forgotten history, through art.” –Richard Haynes Jr.

Queen Slipper City

Historic New England Haverhill Center is located in one of the largest former shoe factories in Haverhill.

In 1900, 40% of the country’s shoes were manufactured in Massachusetts and Haverhill—“the Queen Slipper City”—was the third largest shoe manufacturing city in the United States.

Adapting to changes in fashion and with the advance of organized labor, the Haverhill shoe industry continued to flourish. In 1941, a profile of Haverhill boasted the city as the largest manufacturer of women’s shoes in the US, with over fifty shoe factories in the city, along with other associated businesses in wooden-heel manufacturing and leather tanning.

Memento in Hair

Hairwork, the weaving of hair into mementos and jewelry, like the bracelet seen here, was popularized in the nineteenth century as a way to celebrate love and friendship. The fashion later evolved into memorializing the dearly departed.

Once the purview of skilled craftspeople, hairwork became a Victorian pastime, with instruction manuals and patterns published for at-home use.

Banned in Boston

Massachusetts banned tattoos in 1962 when a hepatitis break-out in New York was linked to tattoo needles. The ban didn’t stop people from getting tattoos; the whole business went underground, giving tattoos the aura of cool.

Tattooing has been used by Indigenous Americans for thousands of years and for different cultural meanings—tribal identity, life milestones, and healing.

In Her Own Right

In the early years of the nineteenth century when there were few opportunities for genteel women to earn a living, Clementina Beach and Judith Saunders ran one of New England's elite schools for girls, located in Dorchester, Massachusetts. We do not know whether grateful students commissioned this portrait by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) or Beach commissioned it herself. In either case it is an unusually early portrait of a woman who was painted not because of who her family was but for what she herself had achieved.

While the Mrs. Saunders and Miss. Beach's Academy is relatively well known, little is known about the private lives of the two women. However, Judith Foster Saunders’s great-nephew makes clear that their relationship was one of loving companionship:

"...the perfect harmony that existed between them, through so many years, which grew even more affectionate in their old age, is a pleasant memory to those who witnessed it."

Eye for the Big Picture

Baldwin Coolidge (1845-1928) was a leading professional photographer in New England from the late 1870s until 1917. With his large-format cameras, he recorded urban life and architecture in Boston and other New England cities, coastal and marine views in Massachusetts and Maine, pastoral scenes in New Hampshire, and events such as floods, fires, and storms throughout the region. He also worked for thirty years as staff photographer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Coolidge maintained a summer studio on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His photograph of the Wreck of the Warren Sawyer was made on Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1885. He documented the Stony Brook Flood in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1886.

Soul Inspired

Vermont-born sculptor Hiram Powers moved to Florence in 1837 to solidify his training. His studio there attracted a loyal clientele of travelers from New England, among them Nathaniel Hawthorne, who rhapsodized when he saw this bust:

“A light seems to shine from the interior of the marble and beam forth from the features.”

The figure is Psyche, a Greek goddess personifying the human soul.

The sculpture is on view at Historic New England’s Codman Estate in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

Adaptive Enterprise

This Navajo rug was purchased in 1906 by a visitor to Wyoming.

In the early twentieth century, Indigenous American goods became popular due to both an interest in handcrafts and, ironically, the subjugation of Indigenous American tribes.

Indigenous Americans, deprived of their land resources, created successful enterprises with craftwork, including rugmaking and basketry.

This rug is on view at Historic New England’s Castle Tucker in Wiscasset, Maine.