Delaware Antiques Show 2021

Even before Winterthur opened to the public as a museum seventy years ago, it inspired those who lived and worked on the property and those who visited from near and far. The beauty of the landscape at Winterthur and the evolution of the house and land influenced Henry Francis du Pont’s course of study in horticulture at Harvard and shaped his life and work as a farmer, gardener, collector, and designer. His vision for Winterthur led him to assemble an unparalleled collection of American decorative arts and to design a house and garden that continues to inspire designers and horticulturists today. Exhibitions currently on view in the Winterthur galleries, as well as one planned for next year, reveal the impact Winterthur and H. F. du Pont have had on American design. Outside In: Nature-inspired Design at Winterthur celebrates the powerful connection between nature and the decorative arts by demonstrating how Winterthur’s interiors bring the outside in, integrating garden and house through objects, materials, color, imagery, and vistas. The enduring theme of nature in design is captured through objects featuring naturalistic elements and materials, and, in some instances, objects such as shells and nests found in nature and on loan from the Delaware Museum of Natural History (fig. 1) . In conjunction with Outside In , the works of six Winterthur Maker-Creator Fellows are on view in Transformations: Contemporary Artists at Winterthur . These artists spent time at Winterthur studying its collections and garden and have responded to objects of the past to comment on the present. Reflecting on the themes of Outside In , their work considers Winterthur and its landscape and exposes the impact humans have had on that landscape and the environment at large. These works include a garden installation of tillage radishes meant to break up unwanted asphalt (Dr. Daniel Feinberg), works on paper and sculptures recalling a fallen tree from the Winterthur landscape (Rob Finn and Stefania Urist), a ceramic still life displaying products of the farm at Winterthur (Heather Ossandon), a roommural that depicts the Winterthur landscape Inspiring Design: From Winterthur to the White House and Beyond By Kim Collison Fig. 1. This display of blue Staffordshire as seen in Outside In , and based on similar groupings in Winterthur’s Blue Staffordshire Room, is set against the backdrop of the garden’s March Bank to illustrate the parallels in du Pont’s approach to massing displays of color in the house and garden. — 11 —