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In an address on antiques given at the first Williamsburg Antiques Forum in 1949, the curator of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joseph Downs, concluded that “little of artistic merit was made north of Baltimore.” Mary Witten Neal, field representative of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston Salem, North Carolina, is engaged in a project to disprove Downs’s allegation.
Neal has been working in the five counties of the Rappahannock-Rapidan Planning District Commission since October, cataloging examples of Southern decorative arts made before 1820. She will be concentrating her efforts in Rappahannock County for the next few weeks.
“I’m not out to buy, only to record,” said Neal. The project is aimed towards a better understanding of the type of work Southern craftsmen were doing in early years, she explained.
Tracking down leads like a detective, Neal goes into private homes to find examples of furniture, silver, ceramics, textiles, paintings, metal works—anything used in die home for decorative purposes. She emphasized that all of her work is completely confidential. Many people are hesitant about showing her their family treasures, afraid that unsavory characters may get hold of her records, said Neal. To allay fears, she said that all her notations were entered in code with the only key in the desk of the Museum’s director in North Carolina.
Some antiques have been passed
93.4%