Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Traveling to New Hampshire

Today was our first field trip. We went with most of the Historic Deerfield museum guides to Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire. The fellows and Josh went to the mill-yard museum while the guides went to an art museum. It was so cool! The curator gave us a tour, and I took a lot of great pictures, and got a lot of good ideas for exhibit design. Because our focus was more on the design than the content, these captions are going to be kind of lame, but here they are anyway:


Here is a model of the mill-yards. There were miles of brick buildings that had canals going through them to run the looms.

This is where the water would come in. The canal is dammed and empty now, but there used to be water flowing through the entire mill. The gears above the opening, I believe, are authentic artifacts.
This is a wooden replica of the cast iron bridges that were throughout the mill for workers to cross the canals to get to their looms.
Here are some samples of cloth that the mills wove. There are several books displayed from different time periods with such samples.

I liked this display. It is representing some of the objects in a typical mill-worker's house.

Because of a time restraint, we had to speed walk several blocks to meet the guides and reach the bus. We then went to the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord. There was a traveling exhibit about America's Kitchens. This is the first venue of the exhibit built by Historic New England. I have to say, it wasn't particularly impressive. There were no pictures allowed in the gallery, so sorry. I did take some other pictures of the rest of the museum.








These are just some of the things at the museum. Due to more time restraints, I didn't read many labels, but I thought most of the shots were decent...

I think I'm going to buy a postcard from each museum we visit so I can fill up a scrapbook or something about this summer and all the trips. It will be very exciting.

Okay, so I really need to do research now, but I hope you enjoy the pictures. I will post more about Deerfield when I have time.
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  1. UnknownJune 18, 2009 at 1:22 AM

    Hooray pictures! It's nice to get a sense of what the museum looks like. The bridge replica with what appears to be a canal underneath, and the photo of the gears were particularly interesting to me. I have to admit, I probably would have preferred to go to the art museum myself, but even so, I'm sure I could have found a few things (like the bridge and the gears) in the mill-yard museum to spark my interest. Good displays do wonders to engage me in subjects I wouldn't otherwise pursue, and I have to give that museum props for good displays.

    I seems like you had a very enjoyable trip. I'm glad.

    If you will permit me one moment to be a little twit, I would like to point out that be "time restraints" I believe you meant "time constraints," the difference being that to restrain is to hold back or prevent, and to constrain is to restrict. (Sorry, can't help it. I'm an editor.)

    It says you posted this journal entry at 8:47 p.m. I hope that's 8:47 Massachusetts's time, not Denver time, because I'd hate to think you were starting research at almost 11:00 p.m. That sounds miserable.

    I should probably get to bed myself. I wasn't supposed to work tomorrow, but one of my co-workers asked if I could cover her shift, since she's sick.

    Hope all is well with you!

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