Boston Flora

Tag: Rose Standish Nichols

  • Wednesday, October 20, 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm Eastern – Rose Standish Nichols: Garden Designer and Writer, Online

    Garden Club of the Back Bay member Judith Tankard will be lecturing on Rose Standish Nichols on October 20 from 8 – 9, hosted by the Southern California Chapter | Presented as Part of the Bunny Mellon Curricula at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. $20 for the general public. Register at https://www.classicist.org/calendar/events/rose-standish-nichols-garden-designer-and-writer/

    Thanks to a generous $1 million grant from the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation, the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art is proud to present first-of-its-kind programming in landscape architecture for designers, students, and enthusiasts, with particular emphasis on educating the next generation: the Bunny Mellon Curricula. This curricula, the first to be named in honor of Bunny Mellon, honors her commitment to landscape design, and her deeply-held belief that architecture is firmly linked to its surrounding landscape.

    Please join landscape historian and author Judith Tankard in a talk about Rose Standish Nichols, who was among an elite group of East Coast women who took up residential garden design in the early 1900s when the profession of landscape architecture was in its formative stage. Her colleagues Beatrix Farrand, Marian Coffin, and Ellen Shipman among others are better known because they focused exclusively on garden design, while Nichols was a prolific author, antiquarian, and political reformer, among other roles. Most of her gardens, which ranged from New England to the South have disappeared except for several in Lake Forest, Illinois, where she collaborated with the architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. Rose was born into an old Boston family with ties to both Winslow Homer and Augustus Saint-Gaudens and her formative years were spent in the famed Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire where she learned the finer points of garden design. An inveterate traveler with a critical eye for design, Rose’s most lasting claim to fame were her articles on design for House Beautiful and her books, English Pleasure Gardens, Spanish and Portuguese Gardens, and Italian Pleasure Gardens. Today her family home is the Nichols House Museum on Beacon Hill in Boston, where one can learn more about her life and accomplishments.

    Judith B Tankard is a landscape historian and author of Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ellen Shipman and the American Garden, and Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes.

  • Saturdays, April 20 and May 18, 1:00 pm, 2:00 pm, and 3:00 pm – The Art of Entertaining

    A House Museum Alliance of Downtown Boston Focus Tour will take place at the Otis House, Nichols House, and Gibson House on Saturday, April 20 and Saturday, May 18, with tours at 1, 2 and 3 pm.  Each tour will take approximately 40 minutes, and admission is $5 at each museum.  Children under 12 free.  Three Boston house museums will draw on their rich collections to illuminate a variety of amusements in 18th, 19th, and 20th century Boston.

    Teas, dinners, musical entertainment and dances were all part of daily life for Boston’s elite in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For the hosts, entertaining was not just a way to spend time, it was also a way to impress, and to make important social, business and political connections. Learn how Boston mayor Harrison Gray Otis and his endearing wife Sally charmed and entertained guests at their home, including some of their harshest critics.  Tour the public rooms of the Otis House Museum, 141 Cambridge Street in Boston, and explore the splendor and entertaining traditions of the federal era that helped make the Otises one of the most prominent and popular couples in Boston.

    For Rose Standish Nichols, the best form of entertainment was interesting conversation. At her famous salon-style afternoon tea parties at 55 Mount Vernon Street, she hosted artists, intellectuals, writers, politicians, religious leaders, and other accomplished individuals for discussions about current events, the arts, and philosophy. Rose Nichols continued the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Beacon Hill tradition of women promoting social causes through gatherings in their homes. Come to the Nichols House, 55 Mount Vernon Street, to learn of the fascinating ways women on Beacon Hill, including Rose Nichols, used their homes as gathering places for discussion and activism. After the tour, guests will be able to taste the strong Hu-kwa tea Rose famously served at her tea parties!

    Be charmed by the Gibson family traditions. Learn about the different types of tea gatherings – simple tea and formal tea. At each of these tea ceremonies, the most important aspect was the appearance of the tea table. A well-equipped table was typically adorned with fine china, gleaming silver, and flowers. Tea time was the most fashionable part of the day for women. A formal tea often took place when one wished to invite eighteen to twenty guests but did not want to undertake the trouble or expense of dinner. Drinking tea became more popular as the Victorian era progressed.  Learn more about the Gibson family and the very important social event of tea time. The Gibson House is located at 137 Beacon Street.

    http://www.angelpig.net/victorian/tea/tea_victorian1.jpg