2018 Gathering - Providence, RI

We had a great time at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, RI

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is the fifth largest museum in the United States. It contains more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than one million visitors a year, it is the 43rd most-visited art museum in the world as of 2016. They pulled some of their purse collection for us to view and although they told us we could not post pictures, we were allowed to take them for our own use.

The Gardner Museum
After her husband John L. Gardner's death in 1898, Isabella Gardner realized their shared dream of building a museum for their treasures. She purchased land in the marshy Fenway area of Boston, and hired architect Willard T. Sears to build a museum modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice. The museum was opened in 1903 and houses more than 7500 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, silver, ceramics, 1500 rare books, and 7000 archival objects from ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy, Asia, the Islamic world, and 19th-century France and America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum

https://www.gardnermuseum.org/

Speakers :

Sherry and Mike Miller –

Mike and Sherry did not disappoint. Their talk celebrated mesh purses made in the 1920s and 1930s. They showed examples taken from the history of the era and explained how each one gave rise to a particular design or series of designs found on mesh purses.

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Doris Coghill – Iroquois raised beadwork

Many of the raised beadwork pieces you see in antique shops and on eBay were made by the various Iroquois tribes in the upper east coast region. Some were made for personal or ceremonial use, but most were made to be sold to tourists either at or around Niagara Falls or from the Wild West shows that were popular during the late 1800’s - early 1900’s. Most of the pieces were done by the Iroquois, Tuscarora and Mohawk tribes. Many of the flat purses that are the most common were done by the Mohawk bead workers.