Public Programs & Events

Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, Rose Nichols carved wooden objects for her family’s homes, including a chest, chairs, and decorative panels that are in the museum’s collection today. She was not the only woman moved to take up her chisel. Daniel Sousa of Historic Deerfield will speak about another woman similarly inspired, Madeline Yale Wynne, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement working in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and Chicago, Illinois.

In 1903, Wynne constructed an oak bride’s chest ornamented with paint, decorative carving, hammered copper panels, wrought iron hinges, and semi-precious stones. Known as Garden of Hearts for its landscape of three inverted heart-shaped trees along a winding river, this chest is a tour-de-force of Arts and Crafts design and showcases Wynne’s talents as a painter, metalsmith, and woodworker. Inspired by 18th-century Connecticut Valley chests, Garden of Hearts was Wynne’s greatest artistic accomplishment, considered “perhaps better than anything she had done.” The chest was recently rediscovered and is now in Historic Deerfield’s collection.

Please join us at this virtual event to learn more about the history and recent rediscovery of Wynne’s Garden of Hearts masterpiece, as well as Wynne’s role within Deerfield’s Arts and Crafts Movement, her remarkably diverse artistic talents, and her innovative and progressive spirit.