Order up!

By: Joshua Harley, Historical Interpreter for Todd’s General Store

Todd’s General Store will occasionally receive a request for the historic craftspeople. Since Todd’s most often works as the go-between, and I am the shopkeeper most often in Todd’s, it is my job to then take the specifications of the request and consult with the appropriate historic craftspeople. Our main focus at The Farmers’ Museum is education, not production, and as such it is not always feasible for the craftspeople to meet both needs. In that event the experience and education of our visitors on site comes first. However, being the stellar group of people that they are the historic craftspeople are often able to do both with adroitness and polish.

In one such instance I received a request for a number of the spade finial hooks made in Field’s Blacksmith Shop. The couple making the request wanted to make a unique pot rack utilizing a few of our hooks, with some minor customizations, to accommodate their various sized pots and pans. I went to our lead blacksmith, Steve Kellogg, and after discussing the requirements he immediately began working. Emails were sent back and forth; details were finalized in these correspondences, questions of aesthetics and style, measurements and hook strength. Finally the hooks were ready to be shipped out. It was not long after sending the hooks off in the mail before I received a small package from the folks that had bought them. The flat rate box was filled with pictures of the completed project and a wonderful note of appreciation!

I was so excited to see these that I immediately emailed the couple thanking them for the pictures and asked if I could write a blog post using their story and pictures. When I was given the green light by them I promptly did not get around to writing it until now (sorry about that folks!). So without further ado here are the pictures of the completed pot-rack.

This is beautiful work combining skills and needs from both the 19th and 21st centuries. As a shopkeeper for The Farmers’ Museum, I was glad to act as the go-between for the historical craftspeople and some of our visitors so that this collaboration was successful. All of the emails, phone calls, and running back and forth was paid in full by seeing these pictures and the knowledge of happy customers with a new well-made addition to their home.

Checking the List ...

By: Joshua Harley, Historical Interpreter for Todd's General Store

Santa Claus is a very busy man. This is a well known fact. With more and more children in the world to visit, sometimes the jolly old elf needs a helping hand. We here at The Farmers’ Museum are happy to help Santa when we can. To that end, we are proud to present our new stocking stuffers, Naughty and Nice bags!

Do you know someone who deserves one (or maybe both) of these hand-printed bags?

Giving gifts to children based on their behavior during the holiday season is a tradition thought to have started in America with the Dutch settlers of New York. At the time shoes were often left by the fireplace for Sinterklaas to fill with candies, toys, poems, or *gasp* coal to those who earned it.

In keeping with this tradition our Naughty bags are filled with our 100% blacksmith-approved coal from our historic blacksmith shop and each is hand filled by our Santa-approved shopkeeper.

Our Nice bag will have traditional gifts of candy and small toys for those who deserve them.

Both the bags were hand printed right here on our historic 1862 Liberty Job Press. It is the oldest Liberty press known to exist - with a serial number of 610 -  and was made in Brooklyn.

So come down to Todd’s General Store at Candlelight Evening on December 11, and help Santa out. That should put you on the “nice” list!

Todd's General Store

By: Kajsa Sabatke, Interpretive Projects Coordinator
You can see this painting, Village Post Office, across the street from The Farmers’ Museum at the Fenimore Art Museum. The scene, set in a general store, shows many of the ways that stores served their communities. Store keepers stocked goods for people to buy, created credit accounts for local customers, provided post office services, and offered a place for people to meet and catch up on the latest news. In the spring, the store was stocked with seeds, tools, and supplies for planting and other springtime tasks. Genre paintings like this one depict scenes of everyday life and are valuable to us not only as art, but also as historical resources. Louis C. Jones, who served as director of NYSHA and The Farmers’ Museum from 1947-1972, said:

All social history is weak when it comes to the habits, work, dress, attitudes, play, and religious life of the lower classes in any society, and this is very true of Americans. People who work with their hands keep few diaries, write few letters, and until recently have seldom been a subject of concern to the scholar. The genre painter captures such people as would a modern photographer.*

You can see Jones, along with George Campbell and Janet MacFarlane, playing checkers in Todd’s General Store.
Today Todd’s is a place where you can buy reproductions of historic items, including some made at the museum, and see one of the back rooms set up with original objects that represent a sampling of the goods available in 1845. If you want to learn more about buying and credit in the 1840s, join us for Getting Ready for Spring on April 4. And to discover more about the art treasures at the Fenimore Art Museum, check out Hidden Treasures. Top: The Village Post Office, 1873. Thomas Waterman Wood (1823-1903). Fenimore Art Museum, Gift of Stephen C. Clark, N0393.1955 Bottom: George Campbell, Louis Jones, and Janet MacFarlane in Todd’s General Store about 1945. *Louis C. Jones, “Genre in American Folk Art,” in Three Eyes on the Past, 167. “Genre in American Folk Art” is reprinted with permission from John C. Milley, ed., Papers on American Art (Philadelphia, Pa.: The Friends of Independence National Historic Park, 1976.)

Inven-STORE-y

By: Erin Crissman, Curator When The Farmers’ Museum is closed in January and February, we staff start in on our winter projects. Our work is seasonal just as it was for farmers in the 1840s. Like those earlier Americans, winter is a time for planning for the spring and summer and getting our “house” in order. For us, most of these are tasks easier accomplished when the museum is dormant in the winter. We plan for next season, apply for grant funding and conduct inventories to ensure our collections records are up to date. This week, a group of curatorial staff embarked on an inventory of Todd’s General Store. We accounted for all of the various items on display like spools of ribbon, toothbrushes, soap and crockery. We’re also cleaning; when buildings are heated with wood, soot settles everywhere!