The Hat and Fragrance Textile Gallery is an exhibit space at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont which houses quilts, hatboxes, and various other textiles. The name "Hat and Fragrance" refers both to Electra Havemeyer Webb's collection of hatboxes and to the fragrant, herbal sachets used to preserve textiles. In 1954, Shelburne Museum was the first museum to exhibit quilts as works of art; prior to this exhibition quilts were only shown as accessories in historic houses.
History
Captain Benjamin Harrington built this structure about 1800 in Shelburne, Vermont. Harrington, who owned and operated a nearby inn, used the building as a distillery to produce spirits to serve at his inn. The building later served as the Shelburne town barn but, after a period of disuse, the town gave the building to the Shelburne Museum in 1947 when the museum moved it to its present site.
Constructed of hand-hewn timbers and rough planks, the building was used as a storage and workshop space for several years while the museum decided how to renovate it as a textile gallery. Adopting the name "Hat and Fragrance", which refers to the museum's collection of hatboxes and herbal sachets used to preserve early textiles, the museum paneled the interior walls with maple, birch, and beech veneers in decorative patterns. The original structure still maintains this decorative paneling. The museum later built four additional rooms to provide further exhibition space.
Collection
Hatboxes and bandboxes
Hatboxes and their smaller relation the bandbox were made of thin sheets of bent wood or pasteboard and covered with decorative printed papers. Serving as an inexpensive form of luggage for men and women, the boxes carried and stored hats, collars, cuffs, and other finery. Their use increased in the 19th century as new roads, steamboats, and steam locomotives encouraged more people to travel.
Shelburne Museum's collection of over two hundred hatboxes and bandboxes is one of the largest and most comprehensive on public display in the country. The collection represents the wide variety of box sizes and forms, paper colors, and designs and is particularly rich in rare, early papers.
Most hat-and-bandbox factories were located in larger cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Hartford. However, many individuals operated small companies to make and sell hatboxes to local markets. One of the best known of these craftspeople was Hannah Davis (1784–1863) of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, whose work is well represented in the museum's collection.
Early boxes were covered with printed and handpainted paper imported from England and Europe. Wallpaper from American printers became available in the 19th century and was quickly adopted by hat and bandbox makers.
Patterns and colors for the papers were influenced by current decorating styles. The images of classical architecture, griffins, and chariots pulled by birds were inspired by the mid-19th century interest in Greek and Roman history. Common and exotic creatures such as cows, beavers, anacondas, and giraffes were inspired by zoos, traveling animal exhibitions, illustrated bestiaries, and geography books. Finally, hatbox makers often copied illustrations of American city and rural scenes, historic landmarks, new modes of transportation, or important people and events published in popular books and magazines. Popular paper designs include the New York City Deaf and Dumb Asylum, a duck hunt, a sidewheel steamboat, President Harrison's log cabin and a balloon ascension.
Quilts and bedcoverings
Embroidered bed-rugs and blankets, coverlets, and quilts were a critical necessity in poorly heated early American homes. The making of bedcovers provided women with an important creative outlet and often served as the primary source of decoration in sparsely furnished 17th- and 18th-century homes. As America's economy grew in the 19th century, the increase in leisure time and the availability of inexpensive factory-woven cloth encouraged thousands of women to embroider, sew, and quilt bedcovers for their families and friends.
Shelburne Museum was one of the first institutions to collect and exhibit American textiles which possess bold graphic patterns, clarity of line, intense colors, and the imaginative combinations of human figures, animals and vegetation which is often whimsical and out of scale.