Collection Spotlight: Phoebe Denison Billings, Bed Rug, 1741

In celebration of National Design Week, the Addison presents three objects from its collection, each highlighting different time periods, mediums, and aspects of American design. The first installment is an exquisite example of an 18th-century Bed Rug by Phoebe Denison Billings.


Phoebe Denison Billings, Bed Rug, 1741, wool worked on wool ground, bequest of Henry Perkins Moseley, 1940.25

The bed rug, used as an outer bedcover during the cold New England winter, is a fascinating object of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century domestic design, as its fabrication process was carried out single-handedly—and therefore controlled exclusively—by the rug maker, from collecting, washing, and carding (or combing) the fleece to spinning it into wool yarn, dyeing the yarn, weaving the fabric, and finally embroidering the patterns. This sophisticated early example of an embroidered wool bed rug was made in Connecticut, the source of most extant bed rugs. In the roughly symmetrical, graphically dramatic floral patterns, tulips and carnations have been combined with broad stylized leaves in an imaginary composition featuring two tones of yellow accented by two tones of green, set against a black background with a deep blue border. The shape of this early bed rug, however, varies from later ones, which typically consist of a square with the bottom two corners rounded.

Two interesting clues pertaining to the bed rug’s history can be found within the design itself; above the floral centerpiece appears the year of its fabrication, while below there is a set of initials, “B/EP.” It is important to note that Phoebe Billings (1690-1775), née Denison, was married to Ebenezer Billings, hence the initials “B” for Billings at top, followed by their first initials, “E” and “P.” The widespread tradition in eighteenth-century New England society, according to which young brides produced bedcovers with the couple’s initials, would suggest that Phoebe and Ebenezer were married in 1741.  What is curious in this instance, however, is that according to surviving records, the couple was married in 1706; in fact, in 1741 Phoebe was 51 years old, had already been married to Ebenezer for 35 years and given birth to ten children. Therefore, in the pre-Victorian era, when specific symbolic gifts for each major wedding anniversary were not yet established, the making of this rug was likely meant to commemorate the couple’s 35th anniversary and celebrate a long and fruitful life in unison.

-- Kelley Tialiou, Curatorial Assistant

Infinite Connections

This spring, twelve Phillips Academy students in Elaine Crivelli’s class "Art 300 Visual Culture: Discovering the Addison's Collection" worked together over a period of six weeks to curate an exhibition of twentieth-century art from the Addison Gallery of American Art’s permanent collection. The end result is a handsome show titled Infinite Connections. The title speaks to the main theme of the show which explores artists’ use of line, color, shape, and form to create their own vision of the world. Viewers are encouraged to make their own personal connections between the artworks in the exhibition just as the artists used the basic foundations of art to explore their own connections with the visual style of abstraction in painting, drawing, and photography. 

Laying out the exhibition

At the beginning of the semester, students met with Addison curators Susan Faxon and Allison Kemmerer, who provided the group with a list of 60 artworks in the collection and shared an overview of the types of abstract styles many of the artists employ in their work. Students were then divided into two groups and charged with the task of identifying potential themes that the works share. After much discussion, and sometimes through lively debates, they whittled the list down to 19 works. They began to see the visual (and ultimately infinite) connections between the artworks, and an order for displaying them began to emerge. To deepen their understanding of the artworks and the artists, each student conducted extensive research on two artists from their final list. They then presented their findings, with the class sharing information about the artists collectively. 

Addison preparators Brian Coleman and Jason Roy spent time with the class arranging the artwork on the walls of the Museum Learning Center. Students also met with Addison education staff Jamie Kaplowitz and Katherine Ziskin to learn more about the museum’s programs for Phillips Academy, and toured storage with David Perry of Addison security to find out about the complex systems that go into operating the building.


Gallery talk

Opening activity

On Tuesday, June 4, the class hosted a reception for Infinite Connections where students presented a gallery talk describing the process of curating the exhibition, and shared their knowledge about the artworks and the artists. Students conducted an activity with the audience using string, which cleverly illustrated the basic premise of the exhibition, that like the artists, viewers of the exhibition can experience the artworks on their own terms by making infinite connections between line, shape, color and form, the basic foundations of abstract art.

Infinite Connections will be on view in the Museum Learning Center through July 31.

-- Rebecca Hayes, Curator of Education

Student Reflections on the Collection: Home by the Sea, Part 2

This academic year, the Addison education department has been fortunate to host three Phillips Academy students as they complete their Work Duty assignments. This past term, we asked the students to choose a work of art from the Addison’s permanent collection and to reflect on its personal and academic significance to the student. This is Part 2 of senior Lauren Kim's reflection on Thomas Worthington Whittredge's Home by the Sea. Part 1 was posted last week.

Just beyond the homestead in the painting, there’s a bank of trees, which opens up to wide, free-spirited plains. The expansive land is similar to a blank canvas in the way that both spaces are open for creation or imagination to fill them—I feel a connection to these open spaces because they represent the expansion of my own horizons—the life that I’ve already experienced and also what’s to come. The homestead in the foreground comes off as more cozy and tight-knit than the distant land and water. Meanwhile, the land and water are free, boundless, and they hint at the idea of what lies outside the framed perspective of the canvas and the familiarity of home. I feel that the small farm identifies with my house, a place whose bounds I’ve grown up within, and the expansive pasture is a natural representation of experiencing the world for the first time: traveling to different countries, maturing intellectually and personality-wise, learning through personal struggle and victories. Whittredge is able to connect the different tiers of environment seamlessly by painting intricate, careful, and specific strokes and using a palette of soft, natural colors. The plains, the sea, and the sky fade from one to the next in a way that emanates a calming and comforting harmony.


Thomas Worthington Whittredge, Home by the Sea, 1872

The atmosphere of the painting is uncluttered and expansive, but instead of leaving the land completely cleared, Whittredge includes fieldworkers and ships. Although they are a small part of the painting, I find it interesting that he chose to include them. The focus could have been just entirely on the shifting of different aspects of nature (the water, the land, the sky) from one into another, but with the people, I thought about what part they play in the painting. I wondered what kind of backstories the workers on the field or on the ships had. Just spending time looking and reacting to it through my thoughts, I also thought about the correlation between the people and the landscape of the piece. I asked myself “how does the location of the people affect themselves or their roles?” Perhaps the ships and the people in the field represent one’s venturing outside familiar grounds: a departure.

People often grow up in a home like my own, but eventually they have to venture out into the world to discover new experiences and expose themselves to different outlooks on life in order to grow. These life opportunities let us open ourselves to diversity of all kinds—whether religious, cultural, or socioeconomic. If I never left home, I wouldn’t be able to fully realize who I could be—I would be held back by a constant feeling of closeness and familiarity. I found this painting in the Addison Gallery, on a campus that is so incredibly far from my home and everything I’ve come to associate with it. Now, I am someone completely different. I’m not the shy, youngest cousin who feels intimidated by her twenty-something cousins at family gatherings, or the daughter who needs my mom to pick me up from the ballet lessons and art classes that I attended against my will. I’ve changed, and I’m no longer restricted to the world of my home.

When I arrived at Andover as a 14 year-old, wide-eyed freshman, my past experiences leading up to that moment had been within the bounds of all things related to home. Now that I’ve been at Andover for almost four years, I’ve been able to develop this deeper sense of home, not limited by physical boundaries, and the underlying meanings a simple word like that could have for an individual. I think that in many ways, Andover has become a new home for me. Through countless meals in the cafeteria around the grey table with friends who I see and spend time with everyday, early mornings during Winter term shoveling paths outside Johnson Hall, and the enriched discussions that saturate the atmosphere in Bullfinch Hall as fully as my mind. So many aspects of Andover will be cherished after I leave, both the bad and the good times. Through reflecting on this painting, I’ve realized that you can’t experience something twice, or that sometimes you don’t truly know how significant something is to you until you don’t have it anymore. Of course, I haven’t lost my home; when I go back to Bannockburn during school breaks, everything often feels the same as the last time I was there, and yes, my parents, my friends, my room are still there. However, being away at Andover and stretching and growing through the challenging, fast-paced atmosphere at Phillips Academy has highlighted the true invaluable and irreplaceable quality of home.

My home will always give me a warming comfort through my pure memories of my childhood spent there.  When I spend time looking at Whittredge’s piece, I can just for a time forget about the uncertainties of my upcoming transition to college (or even my future at large)—the black canvas that lies before me—and remember my home. I feel that the painting depicts a beautiful scene of my life—how far I’ve come and how much further I will go. Home by the Sea reminds me of the future ahead of me. Symbolically like the open, clear sea in the painting—the same waters that have led countless explorers and expeditions to new, unknown destinations—I have my life ahead of me. Time is coming for me to find myself and establish my identity as a person and whichever roles I will take on.

--Lauren Kim, Phillips Academy Class of 2013