Everything for the Garden is for anyone who enjoys gardening at home, visiting historic landscapes, or admiring plants and flowers in art and culture. Colorfully illustrated by material from Historic New England’s extensive collection, the book celebrates the objects and literature that people used to make and enjoy gardens from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Essays by well-known experts include Virginia Lopez Begg on garden clubs and horticultural societies, Alan Emmet on garden portraits, Richard Nylander on a cornucopia of catalogues and on garden architecture and ornament, and Judith Tankard on designing and making the garden.

Historic New England’s jewellery collection spans centuries of family tales, industrial development, and artistic expression. Some of these adornments bear designer names and museum-worthy pedigrees. Some are well used, with stories embedded in every nick and missing stone. Some represent up-to-the-minute trends. Some embody deeply held spiritual beliefs. Through full-color photographs and engaging stories, Keepsakes and Treasures is a gorgeous overview of what jewelry looked like for New Englanders from the mid-1700s to the present. Each piece illuminates a new facet of New England life across the centuries.

An iconic feature of the Maine coast (and in a few places inland), lighthouses have served as important navigational aids but also as tourist attractions, art subjects, and advertising symbols. This lavishly illustrated third volume in Historic New England's visual history series explores the lives and legends of lighthouse keepers, shares tales of maritime disasters, examines the architecture of lighthouses, and discusses efforts to preserve lighthouses themselves. It also explains how Maine's lighthouses have inspired myriad forms of representation, from paintings, photographs, and children's stories to tabletop models and all sorts of practical bric-a-brac. The lights were key to the development of the tourist trade in Maine (beyond facilitating safe landings), and they are a ubiquitous symbol on corporate logos, advertisements, souvenirs, and collectibles--from the past to the present. The ten chapters are from a variety of contributors, and each chapter is richly illustrated with photographs and ephemera culled from private and public collections. Dynamically designed with fold-out covers, this book is indeed a treasure-trove of lighthouse information and images. Edited by RICHARD CHEEK, the book features contributions by W. H. BUNTING, maritime historian; THOMAS ANDREW DENENBERG, director of the Shelburne Museum; TIMOTHY HARRISON, editor of Lighthouse Digest magazine; KIRK F. MOHNEY, assistant director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission; DAVID RICHARDS, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library; and EARLE G. SHETTLEWORTH, Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission and Maine State Historian.

As the center of domestic life, the house is perhaps the most important building type in a democratic society. Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England showcases a variety of drawings of domestic buildings that range in date from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, and depict an array of building types estates, modest single-family houses, summer cottages, and even a typical Boston multi-family dwelling known as a three-decker. Architectural drawings have a history of their own, and this exceptional assemblage outlines how the medium has morphed to meet the growing expectations of clients, the increasing complexity of the construction process, and the demands of new technologies. A large number of beautifully executed perspectives created primarily for formal presentations to clients are featured. As Benjamin Linfoot put it back in 1884, the "architect... must keep his client's enthusiasm alive and active by sending or submitting bright, jaunty little perspectives of his contemplated work." This survey successfully melds Gilded Age works from the venerable offices McKim, Mead& White, and Peabody & Stearns with designs from a century before and after, ranging from the hand of influential pattern-book author Asher Benjamin to those drafted by Dutch-born modernist R. W. Huygens. Drawing Toward Home illustrates changes in taste and technology and presents many of the drawings as works of art. It includes designs by both famous and little-known architects and houses designed in the Federal, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, and International styles. From Great Diamond Island, Maine, to Boston's Beacon Street, and from cottages on Cape Cod to mansions in Newport, the houses featured in this book remind us that the architecture of New England is a touchstone of American architecture.

Cameras float coastward. Almost every old family photograph album contains snapshots of children and sand pails, teenagers frolicking in surf or rowing a rental skiff, young couples half blinded by love and half blinded by beach-reflected sun, mothers with infants shaded by makeshift tents, and old-timers ensconced in folding beach chairs, often shielded by umbrellas..