SUGAR + MEOWS

Vintage panoramic postcard of “West Boylston Mills and Pond, Easthampton Mills”

Cape Cod in October (1946) – Edward Hopper

Holden Street, North Adams, Massachusetts, July 13 (Fujicolor crystal archive print, 1974) – Stephen Shore

Auction Estimate: $8,000–12,000 

Map detail from Atlas of the United States Printed for the Use of the Blind (1837)

View of Boston Common (about 1750) – Hannah Otis (1732–1801)

Rectangular canvas-work picture depicting a Georgian-style house with horse paddock; a church steeple and beacon in foreground; a figure on horseback and black servant in foreground; a male and female figure at left looking over a wall at a body of water; military-style building in background; trees, flowers, birds and animals throughout; original pine frame with gilt border and original glass.

Affluent girls were educated in the feminine arts of embroidery, painting on glass, and quillwork, as well as in reading and writing. After completing a sampler in their embroidery classes, girls worked pictures that proudly were hung in the family home. While the majority of the pastoral scenes depicted on Boston schoolgirl embroideries are based on European print sources, Otis’s chimneypiece is a realistic depiction of Boston Common, with the beacon on Beacon Hill and the stone mansion, built in 1737 by merchant Thomas Hancock, clearly delineated.

Taunton State Hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts

Silhouette portrait of James McKeen by Samuel Metford of Edgartown, Massachusetts (1842)

The Mapparium—Western Hempishere at The Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston, Massachusetts

Weathervanes on a lawn, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (1940) – Alfred Eisenstaedt (German-American, 1898–1995)

Illustrated envelope for a letter from artist Edward Gorey to Peter Neumeyer

Seeing this in Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer prompted me to drive by 12 Powder House Road Ext. in Medford. It’s visually underwhelming, especially when compared to Gorey’s own home, but it was a short drive that I had to make!

Fanciful representation of the Salem witch trials (lithograph, 1892)

“Eastern Point Light, Gloucester, Mass.”