Silver & Spindles Blog

Editor’s Note: Lippitt House's full exterior masonry facade is being restored for the first time in its history. This undertaking involves repointing the exterior brickwork and repairing or replacing badly deteriorated brownstone trim. This two-part blog series, “Lippitt House and ‘The Brown Decades’: A Brief History of the Rise, Fall, and Endurance of Portland Brownstone” explores brownstone as an important 19th-century building material and illustrates how the history of br

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part blog series. Lippitt House's full exterior masonry facade is being restored for the first time in its history. This massive undertaking involves repointing the exterior brickwork and repairing or replacing badly deteriorated brownstone trim. “Lippitt House and ‘The Brown Decades’: The Rise, Fall, and Endurance of Brownstone” explores brownstone as an important 19th-century building material and illustrates how the history of brow

On Being American | Contemporary Artworks, Echoes of the Past is an exhibition reimagining the historic house through the work of five contemporary artists. each drawing on the house's architecture, time period, and stories to explore the theme "On Being American." Curator Susan Hardy reflects that, "If you look at the whole of the installation, you see so much more than the history you would associate with a 161-year- old mansion. A bigger story unfolds and conversation beg

Entitled Patterns in Color and Flow, Wright’s installation transforms the Lippitt House Music Room through immersive images and regional waterways, offering viewers an opportunity to reflect on the unseen systems of labor and the histories flowing beyond the frame which allow the Lippitt House to exist.

Lynne Harlow’s evocative cotton installation on the floor of the library contemplates the question, “how little is enough?”

Textile artist Amalia Goldona Broche’s trio of textile works center the experiences and memories of the laborers that sustained life at the Lippitt House.

Displayed in the Dining Room of the Lippitt House Museum as part of the exhibition On Being American | Contemporary Artworks, Echoes of the Past, Easton’s works invite the viewer to contemplate the house’s architecture and interior, the Victorian period’s fascination with ornamentation, and materiality as a conveyor of cultural value.

If one were to enter the Drawing Room at the Lippitt House Museum, see the small-scale sculptural works installed on individual white pedestals, and ask, “What are these?,” this would be exactly the response artist Susan Hardy hopes to provoke.

This article was originally posted on September 10, 2022, on the Cultural Society Blog under the title “AAC Periodical Preview: Asian History in Rhode Island," by Rachel Kim. Editor's Note: As part of Lippitt House Museum’s Semiquincentennial celebration, commemorating 250 years of U.S. history through the lives of the people who shaped it, the Museum is sharing histories curated from community partners to tell a fuller story of Rhode Island’s history. This guest post from th

The popular 19th century British novelist Wilkie Collins, still captivates readers today.