At critical moments in American history, artisans and craftsmen collectively shaped our material world by looking at the past to interpret the present. Through their makers, furniture, silver, paintings and prints, ceramics, buildings, gardens and landscapes, all responded to the popular imagination about the idealized world at our nation’s founding.

The Colonial Revival, fashionable in the latter nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, thus provides a rich topic for discussion at the 41st Annual Tryon Palace Decorative Arts Symposium, linking to the 50th anniversary of the reconstruction of the Palace. During this two-day conference, historians and scholars look through objects to assess the Colonial world that inspired them and to understand the reverberations of that early American experience into our own time.

1:00-5:00 pm

Registration ~ Commission House, 610 Pollock Street
Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens is open for guided tours on the regular schedule.

4:30 pm

Welcome and introductions
Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens Auditorium

Opening lecture: Creating the American Past: Colonial Revival Architecture, Past, Present, Future
~Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor Architectural History, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.

6:00 pm

Opening Reception ~ Commission House

7:00 pm

Dinner on your own

[Option: Dinner in a historic house, organized by the New Bern Preservation Foundation.

$45.00 per person additional fee. Seating is limited; deadline for reservations
is March 13, 2009]

8:00 am

Continental Breakfast ~ Commission House

9:00 am

Update on Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens
~ Kay P. Williams,  Director

9:15 am

Lecture: Inventing Antiques: The American Antiques Market and the Construction of a National Heritage
~ Briann G. Greenfield, Associate Professor and Public History Program Coordinator, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut

10: 15 am

Refreshments ~ Commission House

10:45 am

Lecture: A Lover of Old China: Edward Lamson Henry’s Historical Interiors
~ Amy Kurtz Lansing, Curator,  Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut

12:00 noon

Lunch on your own
[Option: Lunch in a historic home, $18 per person additional fee.
Trolley transportation available.]

1:30 pm

Program in Interior Architecture at the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro
~ Jo R. Leimenstoll, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of  Interior Architecture, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina

1:45 pm

Lecture: Re-stocking the Colonial China Cupboard to Suit Modern Taste
~ Ellen Paul Denker, Museum Consultant and Independent Scholar, Burnsville,
North Carolina

2:45 pm

Break

3:00 – 4:00 pm

3:00 – 4:30 pm

Student presentation ~ Commission House
Discussion of decorative artifacts and trends with new scholars

Movie: “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” (1948)
Starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas.

6:00  - 7:15 pm

Symposium dinner  Guest tickets: $45

9:00 am

Lecture: Following in the Footsteps of Paul Revere: Colonial Revival Silver
~ Gerald W. R. Ward, The Katherine Lane Weems Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

10:00 am

Break

10:30 am

Lecture: The Colonial Revival Garden
~ Gordon Chappell, Director, Landscape Design, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia

11:30 am

Remarks: Reverberation and Conjecture: The Borrowings Continue
~ Patrick Lee Lucas, Associate Professor, Department of Interior Architecture,
University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina

12:00 noon

Closing remarks and Adjournment: Kay Williams

1:00-4:00 pm

Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens is open for guided tours on the regular schedule.