MacDowell Colony Picnic Basket and Book


Item Number: 081

Time Left: CLOSED

Value: $80

Online Close: Jun 13, 2025 8:00 PM EDT

Bid History: 3 bids - Item Sold!




Description

You could win this custom MacDowell Colony Picnic Basket made by Peterboro Basket Co. plus a copy of A Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony 1907-2007.


A Place for the Arts tells the in-depth story of MacDowell, America's premier artists' residency program, which has nurtured some of the nation's most influential talents in the creative arts, from Edwin Arlington Robinson and Thornton Wilder to Leonard Bernstein, Milton Avery and Alice Walker. This book is published on the occasion of MacDowell’s centennial in 2007.


The picnic basket tradition at MacDowell dates back to when Marian MacDowell brought lunch to her husband in his log cabin studio to prevent the mid-day meal from disrupting his work. In the early years, Marian delivered lunch to fellows in residence herself, traveling MacDowell's dirt roads in her horse-drawn cart. Today, some artists have been known to step outside to greet the staff member delivering lunch, but most are absorbed in their work and so the picnic basket is left silently on their doorstep. Woven ash-wood baskets are custom-made for MacDowell by the Peterboro Basket Company, which has been in business since 1854.


Founded in 1907 in Peterborough, New Hampshire, by the pioneering composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell, his wife, this refuge in the woods soon became a catalytic element in American culture. Based on the radically simple idea that creative people work best when they have time, space, privacy, and the opportunity to interact with fellow artists. MacDowell has for the past century provided to each Fellow a discipline-specific together with living accommodations. Since 1907, thousands of writers, visual artists, composers, filmmakers architects, and interdisciplinary artists have benefited from this program, many of them going on to chart the course of the nation's artistic life.


https://www.macdowell.org/


 


 

Special Instructions

To be picked up in Concord following the auction. Delivery to other areas of the state may be coordinated with the Preservation Alliance.