Have a broken heirloom clock, book, or china teacup that needs repairing? How about an antique doorknob that needs refurbishing? Meet the New England antique repair experts (or “Fixers”) whose specialties and expertise will give nearly anything you own a second or third life. In a world of easy disposability, these New England restoration artists aim […]
renovation
How To
Organize the Bedroom Closet
A bedroom can be an oasis of calm-your last stronghold of serenity in a busy life. You’ll certainly want to set up your bedroom to meet your needs and comfort, but that doesn’t mean style has to go. These shortcuts will help you organize your bedroom closet to control clutter without spending a bundle. Doors […]
Terry John Woods and Dale West extended their Vermont farmhouse sensibility to Down East Maine to create what they consider “the perfect summer home.” The familiar things have their place here: a well-used table; an old cupboard, scraped and painted, awaiting a new round of memories; a scattering of reclaimed boards, smoothed and finished into […]
New Hampshire
New Hampshire Best Lodging 2011
BEST ISLAND LIVING Oceanic Hotel, Star Island For the first time in a long time, the 19th-century hotel on this grand rock in the Isles of Shoals (off the coast of Rye) is open to the public, complete with family-style meals, candlelight walks to the 200-year-old chapel, and plenty of ghost stories. Rates: from $148 […]
Yankee
The Addison Gets a Makeover
No one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain to me why a traditional New England prep school boasts an art museum that would be the envy of most colleges, but the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts is just that. The Addison has been closed since 2008 for a […]
The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut (wadsworthatheneum.org), is home to the largest portion of Wallace Nutting’s collection of original 17th- and 18th-century furnishings, some 550 pieces of furniture, ironwork, lamps, kitchen tools, and other goods, in addition to a sizable collection of the Nutting factories’ 20th-century reproduction furniture, design templates, and hand-tinted photos. Nutting furniture […]
SLIDE SHOW: Winslow Homer works I stand alone on a boulder-strewn shoreline, a rugged symbol of Maine. The waves thrash against the rocks. They shoot a salty mist onto my face and clothing. The sound is almost deafening. It’s no surprise that they call this part of Prouts Neck “Cannon Rock.” Or maybe it’s named […]
Massachusetts
Restaurant Review: The Lyceum
When I was in high school, the kids who took French class were treated to a special end-of-year lunch at a restaurant housed inside a historic 19th-century lecture hall in Salem, Massachusetts. While dining at The Lyceum, we had to speak only in French and at least try les cuisses de grenouilles (frogs’ legs). We […]
A meticulously restored Boston Brownstone provides the perfect setting for holiday family festivities.
It has been more than 11 years since I bought Mary’s farm. You, readers, have been patient listeners of its progress, as I’ve reported sporadically in this column. Work was so slow at times that the project moved more in the tempo of evolution. Money was always an obstacle, and the will of an old […]
This past Sunday I drove west about 30 miles, to Brattleboro, Vermont, where the best of what a core group of people in a community can do was on full display. From the early 1920s, when outdoor visionary Fred Harris, founder of both the Brattleboro Outing Club and the Dartmouth Outing Club, brought Brattleboro to […]
Build on the heights; raise it to the sky. As any good cathedral builder from the Middle Ages will tell you, it’s all about the soaring space, rising and transcendent. The appeal is timeless, of course — that, and the accompanying light. “It was always my number-one priority,” says Bonnie Harris, sitting with her husband, […]