Lost in the Museum by Moses Nancy

Author:Moses, Nancy [Moses, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759113626
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2013-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

6

KER-FEAL

Ker-Feal

Courtesy of the Barnes Foundation

Barnes Foundation

Many people know about Albert Barnes and the Barnes Foundation’s gallery, with its fabulous artworks displayed in his distinctive style. Few know about a quieter branch of the Barnes, hidden deep in the rolling farmland of Chester County, Pennsylvania, a colonial-era farm named Ker-Feal. The farmstead and the dazzling early American antiques inside it were left largely untouched for over fifty years and are only now coming to light.

“You want to see a hidden treasure?” Kimberly Camp replied when I first broached the subject. “How about a house full of them?”

Kimberly Camp, a stately African American woman with a no-nonsense demeanor, was the Barnes Foundation’s first professional museum director. On a sunny September day in 2000, she and I drove the hour-long drive from the Foundation’s gallery in Merion Township to Ker-Feal. A long road led through the silent landscape of fields and forests, past a garage where a caretaker lived, and up to a two-story stone building. We stepped over the threshold and entered a dark, dank room. As Camp unveiled the windows, a stunning spectacle emerged.

Every room offered up perfectly balanced compositions of early American crafts and decorative art: pine cupboards, Windsor chairs, Pennsylvania German wardrobes and wedding chests, grandfather clocks, yarn-winders, tilt-top tables. Walls were covered with mirrored sconces, wrought-iron fixtures, and weather vanes. The original colonial-era kitchen featured a dramatic ten-foot-wide fireplace hung with pots, pans, ladles, and foot warmers. Nearby, a Welsh-style open dresser displayed a colorful array of red-ware plates and a neat row of rat-tail spoons. The living room, in a later addition to the original farmhouse, was topped with ceiling rafters from a nearby 1740s barn and filled with fine examples of Queen Anne, Hepplewhite, and Chippendale furniture.

“You may want to put this on,” said Camp, handing me a mask to protect against the mold. I followed her up a flight of stairs, holding tight to the original colonial-era banister. The second-floor bedrooms featured hand-hewn bedsteads draped with coverlets and quilts patterned in reds, whites, greens, and blacks. Dr. Barnes’s bedroom held a dog-sized bed for Fidèle, the family dog for whom the house was named, underneath an eighteenth-century map of Fidèle’s Brittany homeland. One room was assigned to Barnes’s wife Laura, another to John Dewey, Barnes’s intellectual mentor, and another to his friend Charles Laughton. Over the entrance to Laughton’s room hung a cookie cutter shaped like the rotund actor.

We were in a time warp. It looked as if the place had not been touched for decades. Ancient wood beams showed signs of mold, spider webs draped some windows, and sunlight had faded the colors of the delicate quilts. “Before I arrived, there weren’t even blinds covering the windows,” said Camp. Outside, the grounds were overgrown with weeds and saplings. “Mrs. Barnes’s lovely gardens look like this because there’s only one caretaker and all he has is a push lawn mower and a hand rake,” she explained.

It didn’t take an expert to recognize the importance and scope of this stash of stuff.

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