We're here to see one of the great collections of Americana - one that attracts folk-art lovers the way Gettysburg attracts Civil War buffs. And we came on a Friday night, to make sure we had two full days to see everything.
The Shelburne - just outside the tiny village of the same name - is not a conventional museum; it's what you might call a collection of collections. One happens to be old buildings and other structures; they, in turn, house other collections.
Nor is Shelburne a restored village such as Old Sturbridge in Massachusetts or Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. All the buildings of a typical New England village are here - most of them moved from other sites - but they are not arranged in any sort of village setting. The remarkable woman who created this museum felt that restored villages were dishonest.
The woman was Electra Havermeyer Webb. She was born in 1889, the daughter of Henry Havermeyer, an immensely wealthy sugar baron. The Havermeyers, guided by their artist friend, Mary Cassatt, assembled a collection of old master and French impressionist paintings, some of which now hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Havermeyers were nonplused when their daughter became a collector, not of impressionists, but of folk art. She bought her first cigar-store Indian in 1907, before the terms folk art and Americana were known. She also started buying such items as weather vanes, merchant trade signs, carved eagles, ships' figureheads, quilts, samplers, toys, hatboxes - almost anything old and beautiful and American that struck her fancy.
