Folk Art, Decorative Art, Spiritual Art

I am still in Williamsburg visiting my parents.  Yesterday, we went to the Williamsburg Art Museum, which is actually 2 museums in one new and magnificent building, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum.  It was a delightful day.

Of course I loved all the quilts.  

I don't know that I ever knew that petticoats were once quilted, that quilted petticoats were a fashion item in past centuries, as well as a way of staying warm--plus, a way of using worn quilts, if one needed to do that.

I also loved all the other objects, like the carousel animals, carved with such attention to details, like this cat with a fish in its mouth.

The museum has an extensive collection of tableware, including more teapots in one display than I've ever seen before--tea pots through the ages.

And this doll house--wow.  

And it's decorated for Christmas.

We ate lunch in the Museum Cafe, which has good food, very reasonably priced, and a lovely place to eat the food.  What a delight!

In the afternoon, we went to the auditorium, where we saw a presentation by a historic re-enactor, a man channeling Gowan Pamphlet, the first ordained black Baptist minister in Williamsburg (and in the colonies), ordained in 1772 while he was enslaved.  It was a fascinating talk.  I don't think I knew that John and Charles Wesley came to the U.S.; they came as missionaries to Savannah in 1736.

As Gowan Pamphlet talked to us about his life as a slave in colonial Williamsburg, I thought about the fact that it was a federal holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King.  I thought about all the progress that has been made, the long way still to go.  It wasn't a traditional approach to MLK day, but it worked for me.

As always, I am struck by how much I still do not know/remember, about religion, about history, about every day (and not so every day) objects.  Happily, I still have time and opportunity.