Rustic Ornament in the Victorian Garden

This Stump Pedestal is an example of a popular Rustic Style of garden ornament that developed in the late nineteenth century. This style was adapted to the garden from the Romantic Movement, which was characterized by its nostalgic look at nature. Its love of picturesque landscapes was recreated in the garden. The “English Landscape Garden” or “Jardin Anglaise” relied on objects in the rustic style to create an informal setting that put an emphasis on the true nature of the land.

1979.26, Pedestal, Rustic Stump, late 19th C, Cast-iron, paint, 22 x 18 x 13.

These gardens were more sparsely ornamented than other garden styles. Objects were often created using materials found in nature such as tree branches, twigs, roots, bark, pinecones, animal horns, antlers and seashells and were often handmade. Cast-iron, already a popular material used in the garden used molds that would mimic these natural assemblages. As we see in the rustic stump pedestal, it is cast in a high relief and mimics the look of a tree trunk with thick bark that is entangled roots and oak leaves. It would have been used as a base for a plant stand or bird bath and occasionally could have been used a planter itself. These objects were usually painted in white, black, or natural colors that would blend in with the landscape.

Horticulture magazines and other serials provided layout, planting, ornament and structure designs that would have incorporated objects such as the stump pedestal. This was a popular item that can be seen in the 1858, Janes, Beebe, & Co. New York trade catalogue, the 1875, Coalbrookdale Company of England trade catalogue, and the 1893, J.W. Fiske Iron Works trade catalogue.

Many of these rustic style cast-iron ornaments have been broken or damaged. However, gardeners still feature them in their landscapes today.  Using the broken pieces and fragments of these antique garden furnishings, they create interesting displays that incorporate the past and create a nostalgic and picturesque setting for the present.

Further Reading:
Israel, Barbara. Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999.
Himmelheber, Georg. Cast-iron Furniture, and all other forms of iron furniture. London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 1996
Hill, May Brawley. Furnishing the Old-Fashioned Garden: Three Centuries of American Summerhouses, Dovecots, Pergolas, Privies, Fences & Birdhouses. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.

 -Janie R. Askew
Research Assistant, Smithsonian Gardens
MA Candidate, History of Decorative Arts
The Smithsonian Associates/George Mason University

Victorian Love of Nature, Ornament and Decoration on Display

OH.1985.32, Plant Stand, c. 1850-1900, Cast-iron, 44” x 25.5”

Plant stands such as this, from the Smithsonian Gardens’ Garden Furnishings and Horticultural Artifacts Collection, were the perfect tool to combine a love of nature with a taste for ornament and decoration in the Victorian Era. Named for Queen Victoria of Great Britain, the Victorian Era classifies the period of society and the fine and applied arts during her reign from 1837 to 1901.The cultivation of plants was a widely popular pastime for the Victorians in all levels of society, and their toils were proudly displayed in homes and gardens. Plant stands became an essential item for the exhibit and storage of flowers and foliage. Their practical and decorative benefits were amplified by the link they provided between the domestic interior and the natural world that had gone missing due to the Industrial Revolution.

Plant stands were manufactured in England, America, and France, and came in a variety of forms and materials. Cast- and wrought-iron were the most common materials for garden ornaments such as this; however, they also came in wood, wicker, glass, and ceramic versions and were usually painted white, black, brown, or green.  Circular, semi-circular, or squared structures could be positioned against a wall or in the center of a space. Single level and tiered versions were popular, in addition to the plant stand we see here that has multiple appendages.

This type of plant stand was made using separately cast arms attached to a central axis rod. The arms could be rotated and moved vertically along the pole to display plant specimens of various sizes. The cup at the end of each arm would hold a small flower or foliate, which were often in their own removable liner so they could be changed out seasonally.

 Plant stands are still a popular indoor and outdoor garden accessory for displaying plants. Just as they did during the Victorian Era, they showcase a selection of seasonal varieties to beautify the home and bring nature within reach.

 Further Reading:
Israel, Barbara. Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999.

 -Janie R Askew
Research Assistant, Smithsonian Gardens
MA Candidate, History of Decorative Arts
The Smithsonian Associates/George Mason University

The American Bottle Tree

Have you ever caught a glimpse of a bottle tree shimmering in the sunlight of your neighborhood? Made from brightly colored bottles placed over the branches of a tree (or in more recent years a metal frame), these garden sculptures catch attention in any space, such as the one pictured below in the Gibson Garden in Dallas, Texas. Although they are not a particularly common sight, they have a long history as an element of spiritual, cultural, and aesthetic significance in American history and garden design.

A Bottle Tree in the “Oak Lawn” garden room of the Gibson Garden. Although this garden in Dallas is typically noted for its Japanese-inspired design, the presence of a bottle tree demonstrates how this garden feature of African and African American origin has evolved to become a component in a range of garden designs. Image from the Garden Club of America Collection, Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Institution. David H. Gibson, photographer.

Folklore and written sources from as early as 1776 indicate that this centuries-old custom originated in the kingdom of Kongo on the West African coast, where vessels were combined with tree branches.  When Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves, some were able to continue this practice, using whatever resources they had available. Variations appeared on islands in the Caribbean. The more familiar bottle trees we recognize today were likely a Creole invention, becoming particularly prominent in the southern United States from eastern Texas to South Carolina, where bottles were often placed on the branches of crape-myrtle trees.

While the  meaning of bottle trees continues to evolve as it has for centuries, one of the more common interpretations is that they protect the home and garden by catching evil spirits, which some say are attracted to the bottles by their bright colors (sometimes made by swirling paint on the inside of a clear bottle). Once inside, the sunlight destroys the spirit.   Other interpretations suggest the spirits are trapped inside the bottles in the evening. Then, the morning sunlight destroys them. If you pass by and happen to hear the wind blowing across the bottles, it is thought to be the sound of the spirits trapped inside. Bottle trees have also been thought to bring rain, luck, and to make trees bloom.

Writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001) took the bottle tree from the landscape onto the pages of American literature in her short story “Livvie,” giving her work a distinct sense of place in the American south. As she described the scene,

Coming around up the path from the deep cut of the Natchez Trace below was a line of bare crape-myrtle trees with every branch of them ending in a colored bottle, green or blue.  There was no word that fell from Solomon’s lips to say what they were for, but Livvie knew that there  could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born with the way bottle trees kept evil spirits from coming into the house…Solomon had made the bottle trees with his own hands over the nine years, in labor amounting to about a tree a year, and without a sign that he had any uneasiness in his heart, for he took as much pride in his precautions against spirits coming in the house as he took in the house…

This story, as Welty said in a 1987 interview, was inspired by bottle trees she saw and photographed in rural Mississippi during the 1930s and ’40s: “it was the place, really. And it was the bottle tree that made me write it.” In the same interview, she lamented that “there are hardly any anymore because of the highways. You know, the interstates have come through….They have vanished now, and the roads have come in…But there probably still are some away back in somewhere.”

Writer Eudora Welty photographed this house with bottle trees in Simpson, County, Mississippi during the time she worked for the WPA in the 1930s and ’40s. It appears in her book of photographs, “One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression” (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996,pg. 45).
Image © Eudora Welty Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Although they continue to take on varied forms and uses today, bottle trees still have a presence in gardens and cultural landscapes across the United States, such as those photographed by Vaughn Sills and in the Gibson’s garden in Dallas. Through a long journey encompassing slavery and freedom, and into the Archives of American Gardens, the bottle tree continues to be a garden feature with an American story to tell.

- Joe Cialdella, Enid A. Haupt Fellow

A Look at “Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens”

What would you do with a camera and time to investigate a new place? For photographer Vaughn Sills, a walk through Bea Robinson’s garden in Athens, Georgia inspired a 20 year journey that resulted in a series of photographs that she’s collected in her book Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens (2010).   Focused on the South, her book covers gardens in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, and Arkansas, providing viewers with a glimpse of the American landscape that can otherwise be difficult to find.

Through her skillful compositions with gentle light, crisp focus, and tight frames, Sills invites us into intimate spaces, given meaning not only through her lens, but by the gardeners who create them.  In these images, viewers will find inventive, artful, and spiritual approaches to garden and landscape design, using wide varieties of plant life and material culture.  From Canna lilies to old tires, gardeners interweave these elements to create meaningful places.  The specific garden arrangements Sills’ captures reflect the personal tastes, styles, and circumstances of the gardeners who create them. At the same time, each garden often has common elements (such as shells, figures, urns, and bottle trees) that make them recognizable a genre today, and connect them to lager cultural traditions and aesthetics in African American and African culture that have been changed and adapted over time.

While the gardens and gardeners Sills photographs are often few and far between, like the gardens themselves, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  As a collection, Sills’ images are a distinct contribution to American landscape photography and the history of garden design because they demonstrate how African Americans have contributed to the making and meaning of the American landscape.  By helping to preserve this legacy, these photographs and gardens are also a poignant reminder that America’s cultural landscape is influenced by the spirit and creativity of many.

You can find some of Sills’ photographs on her website. The photographs from her book are currently on display at  Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For more on the topic of African American gardens see:

Glave, Dianne. “‘a garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design’: Rural African American Women, Gardening, Progressive Reform, and the Foundation of An African American Environmental Perspective” in Environmental History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jul., 2003).

Gundaker, Grey and Judith McWillie. No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work, 2005.

Gundaker, Grey. ed. Keep Your Head to the Sky: Interpreting African American Home Ground, 1998.

Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, 1983.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, 1983.

Westmacott, Richard.  African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South, 1992.

Roses are red, Violets are blue: What are these flowers saying to you?

Walcott, Mary Vaux. Pink Rose with Violet, watercolor on paper, 1876. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet.

And so are you.”

The sweet and playful lyrics of this poem are found among the nursery rhymes of Mother Goose and often make their way into the sentiments of Valentine’s Day cards.

Is there more to this sweet refrain? Attaching meaning to certain flowers has occurred throughout history, but during the Victorian era the ‘language of flowers’ was turned into a studied exercise. This was a code that attached characteristics and expressions to all types of flora. Entire dictionaries were also published to pair each flower and its color to a specific meaning.

When we consider the verse again using the language of flowers as our guide, the words of the familiar poem have a renewed sense of purpose.

Roses are red: The meaning of roses varies according to their color; the red rose is one of the flowers most associated with Valentine’s Day because of its connotations of love, passion, desire, and beauty. To give a red rose is to say, “I love you.”

Violets are blue: Though we see violets used less frequently than roses in a valentine bouquet, they are forever associated with one another in these verses. Meanings of modesty, faithfulness, humility, and simplicity are embodied in the delicate violet, and it holds the answer to the bold statement of the red rose. To give a violet is to reply, “I return your love.”

Reconsidering this simple rhyme with the meaning of the red rose and its companion the blue violet, the words and the flowers they invoke reinvigorate the quaint nursery rhyme, and reveal truly romantic sentiments to be combined in the perfect bouquet on Valentine’s Day.

-Janie R. Askew
Research Assistant, Smithsonian Gardens
MA Candidate, History of Decorative ArtsThe Smithsonian Associates – George Mason University

Gardens All Their Own: Early African American Gardens in Detroit

Detroit was still a burgeoning industrial center in 1918 when John and Elizabeth Crews ended a journey “through six states seeking a home” and settled in the city. As part of the Great Migration, when African Americans began moving to Detroit in large numbers for employment opportunities and an escape from Jim Crow segregation, the Crews and many others were faced with the challenge of making a place and building community in a new environment.

In Detroit, many stopped their traditional gardening and food growing practices because urban-industrial life offered new opportunities to escape toiling on the land. Others changed and adapted their horticultural practices. Although the East Side of the city where many migrants first lived was quite dense, some managed to cultivate gardens here, while others moved to areas with more space.

Although photographed in 1949, this house with a small garden in Detroit’s East Side neighborhood suggests some of the ways Detroit’s African American migrants in the early 20th century made use of their yards. The image was taken by the agency charged with documenting and appraising the neighborhood before it was demolished to build Interstate 75.
Image Courtesy of Corporation Counsel – Real Estate Division records, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. Used with permission.

For those with financial means, the West Side of the city offered one of the first opportunities for African Americans in the area to cultivate a suburban garden aesthetic in a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes. Yards were landscaped with lawns and adorned with flowers and trees (often fruit trees). One resident planted so many flowers along her fence that she was known as “The Flower Girl.”  Unlike other suburbs, however, rock gardens were often a common feature, especially in the more private space of the backyard. As one resident remembered, “Roosevelt was a serene and beautiful street with trees, green grass, butterflies, [and] beautiful rock gardens in back yards…”  The neighborhood was so closely knit one resident described it as “village.” Home ownership created a shared sense of community as residents worked to maintain a suburban sense of place.

This rock garden in a back yard on Roosevelt Street was created from rocks the owners collected on their travels. From “Remembering Detroit’s Old Westside: 1920-1950,” 1997.

In the Eight Mile-Wyoming area, where the Crews lived, residents often had a different vision of the suburban ideal, raising chickens and growing gardens that often included vegetables, such the “Kentucky Wonder” green beans the Crews canned to eat throughout the winter.   Corn was also a common sight in the neighborhood, along with an informal system of community gardening. As one resident told a visitor, they had no trouble with people stealing from their garden because, “we just plant a little more than we need each year to take care of that.”  Alternately, “if we run low, we just get a few [ears of corn] off of somebody else’s. We all know that. We don’t care. We’re friends out here!”

A house with a cornfield in the Eight Mile/Wyoming neighborhood. Photograph by John Vachon, U.S. Farm Security Administration (courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division).

Not everyone found this more rural way of life appealing, however. During the 1920s and 30s, the Detroit Urban League (an organization founded to assist African American migrants in Detroit) often sponsored flower garden contests (complete with prizes of cash or flower bouquets)  in this neighborhood to beautify what they considered to be unsightly “yards,” not gardens. According to one observer,  during the spring contest houses in the neighborhood were “surrounded by riots of bloom…porches and fences sag under the weight of rambler roses, honeysuckle, and clematis; the yards bloom with myriads of flowers.”

While images of these gardens are sparse, bits and pieces from the written record help to illuminate the ways African Americans used gardens to create a sense of place, belonging, and community in Detroit, a tradition that continues with community gardening projects in the city today.

-Joe Cialdella, Enid A. Haupt Fellow

Sunflowers at the Manistique Community Garden, on Detroit’s East Side, August 2012. Photograph by Joe Cialdella.

It’s Not Just About Plants

Gothic Settee, Kramer Brothers Foundry Company, circa 1880-1900. Garden Furnishings Collection, Smithsonian Gardens.

In 1973, just a year after it was established, Smithsonian Gardens acquired its first antique garden furnishing for display on the Smithsonian campus in Washington, D.C. Since then, over 2,000 garden furnishings and horticultural artifacts have been collected by Smithsonian Gardens ranging from delicate bouquet holders to towering fountains. While most of the pieces date from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, all help to document important facets of our garden heritage.

The Garden Furnishings Collection includes hundreds of cast iron pieces such as settees, chairs, urns and wickets. Dozens of these furnishings are currently on display throughout a number of the Smithsonian gardens. They are a particularly appropriate complement to the ornate architecture of the Smithsonian Castle and the Arts and Industries Building.

While not much is known about the origins of many specific pieces in the collection, Smithsonian Gardens staff and interns have gleaned general information about some cast iron furnishings from historic trade catalogs that document the wares of numerous foundries operating in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Fortunately, one settee on display in the Ripley Garden features a maker’s mark that indicates where it was manufactured and by whom.

With the rise of the middle class in the mid-nineteenth century, many objects made for utilitarian use, such as garden furnishings, saw a dramatic change in the way they were designed and manufactured. Victorian furniture is characterized by a jumbling of styles, often incorporating design elements from previous eras, from High Renaissance to Gothic to Rococo. Makers and buyers would simply pick elements they found pleasing and incorporate them into a piece with no regard to purity of the original designs.

For example, this Smithsonian Gardens’ settee incorporates both Gothic and Rococo design elements at the same time, something that would hardly have ever been done prior to the Victorian era (1837-1901). Overall, the settee is extremely Rococo in its form and design. Characteristics of the Rococo period can be seen in the fluid curl of the cabriole legs and in the “c” scrolls that make up the arms. These two elements are characteristic of the asymmetry and playfulness of the Rococo period of the late 18th century, and would not have been combined with the structure and orderliness favored during the Gothic period (12th-16th centuries).

Interestingly, this settee features more Rococo elements in its design than it does Gothic, which was the name given to the pattern by the manufacturer, the Kramer Brothers Foundry Company of Dayton, Ohio. The only distinctly Gothic element is the back of the settee, which is comprised of four rows of repeating arches. It is this combination of characteristics from different styles that makes this piece unique and interesting, much like countless other objects from the late Victorian period. In pieces like this settee, it is easy to see why the period—which was overwhelmingly influenced by the large variety of revival styles—has been called Victorian Eclecticism.

-Brittany Spencer-King, Research Assistant

January is National Mail Order Gardening Month

Images from the 1902 W. Atlee Burpee & Company Farm Annual. W. Atlee Burpee & Company Collection, Archives of American Gardens.

As we enter the deepest winter months, thick tomes of eye candy for gardeners are beginning to arrive in mailboxes across the country, a small reminder that spring is just around the corner. ‘Mortgage Lifter’ or ‘Tasty Evergreen’ tomatoes this year? ‘Tennis Ball’ Lettuce anyone?  And peppers that come in every color of the rainbow with names like ‘Purple Glow in the Dark’? Thick with gorgeous pictures, mail order seed catalogs offer a seemingly infinite variety of choices. It’s no wonder that a gardener could easily order more seeds than they have plot to plant.

Mail order seed companies have a long history in the United States. When you order from a seed catalog, you’re engaging in a time-honored winter ritual. One of the most recognizable names in the mail order business, W. Atlee Burpee & Company, was founded in 1876 in Philadelphia. In addition to flower and vegetable seeds, the company also sold livestock and poultry. W. Atlee Burpee sought the best seeds from the United States and Europe, following leads to strange and faraway places, and his mail order business quickly grew to a national level. He founded Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania to develop hybrid plants and test new varieties, ensuring only the best seeds were mailed to consumers.

With the introduction of the Rural Free Delivery Service in the 1890’s, the company took advantage of the service to widen their audience for their yearly catalog. By that time Burpee was the largest seed company in the United States. Some of the varieties made famous during the company’s early years are still known and loved today. ‘Iceberg’ lettuce was introduced in 1894 and ‘Golden Bantam’ corn in 1902. Both remain favorites with gardeners today. The lush watercolor illustrations of the early catalogs gave way to color photography, and now it’s just as easy to visit the website as it is to browse the catalog.

Fish Pepper, Capsicum annuum ‘Fish’

The W. Atlee Burpee & Company Collection at the Archives of American Gardens contains business records, catalogs, diaries, and other company materials spanning the years 1873-1978. You can read more about the collection here:

http://gardens.si.edu/collections-research/aag-burpee-collection.html

If you are looking for new ideas for your own garden, Joe Brunetti , Horticulturist at the Victory and Heirloom gardens at the National Museum of American History, has a few suggestions:

 

Tried and True!

• Tennis Ball Lettuce
• Pepper ‘Sweet Banana’
• Tomato ‘Djena Lee’s Golden Girl’
• Tomato ‘Wins All’
• Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt’
• Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena)

Cool & Unusual:

• Holy Basil (Tulsi)
• Stevia ‘Sweet Leaf’
• Toothache Plant (Spilanthes acmella)
• Red Malabar Spinach
• Pepper ‘Fish’
• Pepper ‘Purple Glow in the Dark’
• Zinnia ‘Burpee Rose Giant Cactus’

-Kate Fox, Museum Educator

Over Sea and Land … and into the Victorian Parlor

OH.GF.1980.11, Wardian case – Miniature Church, 20th century, Wood, Glass, 27” x 16.5” x 12.5”

Often referred to as the Victorian Era, the nineteenth century was characterized by a growing interest in the collection, preservation, and identification of botanical specimens. New species of plants were carefully imported to England and America from all over the world, and cultivation of these exotics became a popular pastime. This interest was not met without challenges. The soot and pollution from the factories of the Industrial Revolution made it difficult for new plant species to survive. A London surgeon and amateur naturalist, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868) stumbled upon a solution one day when he noticed that a bulb he had moved to a glass jar, and then forgotten, was thriving in this little habitat. Soon after this discovery, he began making ‘closely glazed cases’ (sic) for growing and extending the life of plants. These glass plant cases, renamed Wardian cases in homage to their inventor, were like tiny greenhouses that were sealed but not airtight. They provided an atmosphere free of pollution with ample light, heat, and moisture ideal for the cultivation of exotics. 

The invention of the Wardian case also allowed for new possibilities for transporting plants across long distances. Shipping during the nineteenth century is not what we know today: no priority mail or next-day air delivery options. Railroads, carriages and ships took weeks to deliver plants to a location. Inside a Wardian case the survival rate was considerably higher, as plants were able to travel in a protective environment that provided for their every need.

Despite contributions to the study of botany and improvements to the transportation of plants, the Wardian case is typically associated with household décor rather than invention. Their small size made them accessible to a larger portion of society who could not afford to own greenhouses. Because of their ability to preserve plants indoors, Wardian cases were brought into the parlors and drawing rooms of the Victorian household. This was in large part due to the encouragement of growing and tending to plants as a suitable hobby for young ladies. To suit the Victorian taste for decoration, cases were made to look like miniature buildings such as churches and famous houses. Comprised of a variety of materials that were suited to any price range, they were made in all shapes, sizes, and styles. Their popularity and availability made them a staple of fashionable drawing rooms.

This Wardian case in the Smithsonian Gardens’ Garden Furnishings and Horticultural Artifacts Collection is an example of a nineteenth century innovation and a characteristic feature of the Victorian-era domestic interior in both Britain and America.

 Further Reading:
Allen, David Elliston.  The Victorian Fern Craze: A History of Pteridomania. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1969.
Whittingham, Sarah. The Victorian Fern Craze. Oxford: Shire Publications Ltd., 2009.

 -Janie R Askew
Research Assistant, Smithsonian Gardens
MA Candidate, History of Decorative Arts
The Smithsonian Associates/George Mason University

 

The Story of the Finial in the Ripley Garden

For a long time I have been thinking that the Ripley Garden needed something special to replace the birdhouses that have been at the Northern Entry of the garden for many years. The birdhouses have been great—the public loved them and those ‘in the know’ appreciated the nod to Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley (he was an ornithologist). However the birdhouses were looking a bit worn and I was ready for something different. But what could I put there? I wanted it to be unique to the Ripley Garden and have meaning, but what? I had no idea, but was hoping I would know it when I saw it.

There it was – it literally flew over my head – attached to a 200 ft construction crane.

For the past year I have been mesmerized with the entire process of the restoration of the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building. I have always loved this historic building and watching the restoration process has been incredibly educational. It seems like every day something fascinating is happening.

I had been watching the various pieces of ornamentation coming down off the rooftop and was totally astounded by not only the size, but the beautiful details and complexity of some of the pieces. For example, the finials for the corner towers soar to over 9’ tall and that doesn’t include the cap that slides over the point!

After working adjacent to this building that I adore for over a decade, I thought I knew it, but I was seeing things that I had never noticed before. I had not realized that there were so many different types on ornamentation on the roof. Amazing! And I also did not realize that they were all made of galvanized sheet metal! Even the sculpture of Columbia which stands atop the North Door is made of metal! I always thought they were carved out of stone.

Bingo. The special piece I was looking for which was beautiful, but also with a story behind it, was a finial off the Arts and Industries Building! This would help tie the Ripley Garden to the museum it nestles up against, and also give me a chance to tell the public about this gorgeous building and the wonderful restoration process that is ongoing. It would be PERFECT!!

Only one problem; the reason the finials were being removed was so they could be sent out for restoration before being returned to the roof. And yes, they would miss one. (Don’t worry, I asked!)

So, I asked one of the restoration specialists what it would cost to create a new one for the garden. (Never hurts to ask you know!) His ballpark estimate of the number of man-hours it would take to replicate the ornate details squelched any further inquiry on my part. It was out of the question due to cost. My dreams of a finial in the garden were fading fast.

However, Pat Ponton, the Smithsonian liaison for the project, told me that there was one piece that would not be going back up and that he might be able to get it for me. He told me that it was lacking the detail of many of the others, and was not a historical piece. Apparently, there had been some construction in the 1970’s on the roof and one of the original finials had to be replaced so something similar, but not as detailed as the original, was created very quickly. This is the piece that Pat was thinking about.

Although it had left the property, through much perseverance Pat was able to retrieve this finial and have it returned to the site. On the morning of June 21st, with the able assistance of Sammy, the Tower Crane operator, and a couple of members of the wonderful Grunley Construction team, the piece of ‘Architectural Salvage’ from the Arts and Industries Building found a new home a little closer to the ground.

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There are still a few mysteries behind this piece, including why is it missing the top point, but I am so delighted to have this little piece of history on the ground!

None of this would have happened without the efforts of my new friends who are restoring a historical gem. I am very thankful to the crew working on the Arts and Industries Building who have been so kind to me and careful with the garden.

Janet Draper
Horticulturist
Smithsonian Gardens

http://www.gardens.si.edu