ECLECTIC ANTIQUES IN A DUTCH ARCHITECTURAL TREASURE

Roger Ross and partner, Eric Bongartz, are the current caretakers of the historic DePuy-DeWitt House, built 300 years ago in Upstate New York by descendants of early Huguenot refugees to America.

Holly Christiana

HUGUENOTS

After centuries of religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants in France, a group of French-speaking dissenters eventually fled Europe to start anew in America, where they rose to become prominent artisans, politicians, and even Presidents.

IN BLUE AND WHITE AND POLYCHROME: CHINESE EXPORT PORCELAIN

A thousand years before Western potters mastered the production of hard-paste porcelain, artisans in China had perfected it. Even before America and China began to trade directly in the late 1700s, wares designed specifically for Americans were already pouring in.

Ware Petznick

LACE MAKING IN IPSWICH

In nearly every household in seacoast Ipswich, Massachusetts, needleworkers used their skills in the cottage industry of making linen and silk bobbin lace to survive hard economic times. The papers of U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton record and preserve their efforts.

Jeanmarie Andrews

COLONIAL COSMETICS

White skin, rosy cheeks, silk patches, and bouffant hairstyles marked the fashionable women and men of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Europe and later America. Maintaining that beauty could be a surprisingly costly and time-consuming endeavor.

Rebecca Rupp

STALKING RHUBARB THROUGH HISTORY

A priceless medicinal in ancient China, the dried roots of rhubarb were valued as a digestive and laxative. Once the British and Americans began growing rhubarb in their gardens, they discovered the stalks made tarts with “a pretty flavour.”

A VOYAGE TO REMEMBER

In 1809, Nicholas Roosevelt and his young, pregnant wife, Lydia Latrobe, set off on a Mississippi River journey to deliver Robert Fulton’s steamship New Orleans—the first on the river—to the eponymous port. The couple’s son and a cousin recounted their adventures in the wilderness.

Winfield Ross