The ACSM would like to thank the community of the Ardens for making our exhibition opening on October 22 such a success. "Finding a Home in the Ardens: Camps, Cottages, and Castles" would not have been possible without your support.  Many thanks to everyone who loaned objects, helped with installation, and shared stories of their homes. 

Please enjoy these photos captured by Sadie Somerville!

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Museum and Archives Committee member Pat Morrison learns about early businesses in the Ardens.

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Curators past and present enjoy the opening.

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Museum and Archives committee member Barbara Macklem shows Harry and Betty Ann Themal a display on Ardentown.

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The reception in the Bernie Schwab Community Room.

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Cake with an image of the Founder's House.

The Arden Craft Shop Museum will be closed on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen at 1:00 pm on Sunday, November 26.

The Arden Craft Shop Museum will be closed this Wednesday, October 11, 2017 while we install our new exhibit, Finding a Home in the Ardens. We will re-open on Sunday, October 22, 2017. Please join us then for our exhibition opening from 1pm to 3pm. Refreshments will be served.

The ACSM welcomed 16 campers from the ACRA Summer Camp program for two special days celebrating the tradition of plein air painting.

The campers first visited the Museum for a look at a number of watercolor painting in the collection.

Under the talented and expert direction of Betty O’Regan, the campers moved to the Arden Green for a lesson in paining with watercolors, as well as pastels and other media. The campers then spread out across the Green with palettes, paper, and paints in hand to create their own artwork. Imagination and reality were well blended by this next generation of artists from the Ardens.

Many thanks to Betty for her willingness to share her talents and time with these campers!

Blog post by Barbara Macklem. Photos courtesy of Sadie Somerville.

by Sadie Somerville

After reading the story of the Lusty Horns by Allan Kleban in last month’s Arden Page it brought back great memories of the Arden Centennial Pageant and how it all happened.

Back in the late 1990’s I was working at the Arden Archives (which had not yet become a museum) and I was mesmerized by the collection of old photographs of early Arden and Ardenites. I was particularly taken with the images of the Medieval Pageant that the town’s folk put on in 1910 & 11 and I imagined how much fun it would be to reenact (in a new form) the same idea for Arden’s Centennial. I pondered how it could be done and started by finding someone with horses to lead the pageant (as seen in the old photo).

ACSM00018. 1911 Arden Pageant. Left to Right:  Don Stephens, Jean Worthington, William Lightfoot Price

ACSM01612. Lady Sadie and King George, Arden Centennial Pageant 2000

ACSM01609. ACRA with their banner in the Pageant and Equestriennes leading the parade, Arden Centennial Pageant 2000

A good time was had by all, in spite of the rain. Afterward, we all went home to get dry and warm before going to the evening’s Medieval Banquet at the Gild Hall.

But that’s another story.

See images of the 1911 pageant and other historic images online at: http://www.ardencraftshopmuseum.com/photographic-collection.html           
 - Lady Sadie

ACSM01611. Sue Windle on Horseback in Pageant c 1911

ACSM01643. Horses in front of The Arden Inn, Arden Pageant c 1910

ACSM01652.  Townsmen and Ladies at the Inn, with “A” banner, Arden Pageant c 1910

Here at the Arden Craft Shop Museum, we tell the story of the Ardens, which include the villages of Arden, Ardencroft, and Ardentown in Delaware. The Arden Craft Shop Museum seeks to educate visitors on the Ardens’ history as single-tax communities in addition to how the roles of theater, craftsmanship, art, and other aspects of life have affected the development of the Ardens as a close-knit community. In addition to a broad range of arts and craft objects, books, and manuscript documents, we have a growing photographic collection that documents life in the Ardens from the late 1800s to the present day. We want to share this photographic collection with scholars, the local community, and everyone else interested in the development of the Ardens. As a small museum with limited hours and staffing, we realized that providing digital access to our collections was an important part of our mission to educate and support our community.
 
We have found that Airtable provides a fantastic platform to organize and promote our photographic collection. In addition to creating a virtual gallery of our images, Airtable also allows us attach metadata to our collection, ensuring that important information on a photograph’s provenance or relationship to other collection items is not lost. We’ve been able to physically remove photographs from acidic and non-archival albums that threatened to damage them, knowing that we can preserve an intellectual arrangement.

One of our favorite features on Airtable are the subject tags, which allow users to search for people, places, and events of interest. With this, we’re not limited to traditional archival hierarchies, nor do we have to sort photographs into single categories. If users want to search for images of a particular building AND a notable person, they’re able to do this by using multiple filters. These subject tags have also allowed us to inventory the collection and easily search for images to use in an upcoming exhibit.

Airtable even allows us to embed our database on our webpage:

Airtable has provided the museum with a method to gain intellectual control over its photographic collection and has already made the collection accessible to a much wider audience. We look forward on continuing to expand our collection and the audience it reaches.

Journalist Mary Pilon will be giving a talk at Hagley Museum and Library on Thursday May 4th about her new book, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game.  Arden is specifically mentioned in Pilon’s book, with an entire chapter dedicated to “A Utopia Called Arden." The talk begins at 7pm and is free and open to the public.

The Arden Craft Shop Museum will be closed this Sunday, April 26, 2017 to observe the holiday. We will reopen on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:30 pm. Have a wonderful weekend!

The ACSM is delighted to announce that we received a grant New Castle County Council through the good offices of our Councilman John Cartier!  On Wednesday, February Councilman Cartier presented a check for $1800 to the Museum and Archives Committee at their regular meeting.  The funds will be used to cover the cost of a new fire-proof file cabinet to house the ever-growing collection of the Arden Archives.  Councilman Cartier has been a long time supporter of the Museum and was very nice to welcome him for a return visit in an official capacity to bring the check.
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The Arden Archives Collection is one of many collections in the Museum. It holds a wide variety of primarily printed material about the three villages.  As the Museum is a collecting institution, new items and newly gifted old items are always being added. Committee members sort material and use the Finding Aid to file it in the right place.  Researchers often use the collection to learn information about their chosen topics – in some ways it serves as a scrapbook for the Ardens. 
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Now, thanks to Councilman Cartier, we have the additional space we need to keep the collection safe.  When you stop in to see the exhibition There’s a Gild for That or to pick up some additional greeting cards – be sure to admire the new cabinet – we are so please to have it in the Museum.