Welcome to the Spring 2019 issue of VAN.  Feel free to use that link if you just want to scroll through all the stories directly on the website.  This is an exciting issue packed with great information you won’t want to miss!

Featured in this issue is the upcoming annual meeting “Landscapes of Succession”  in Philadelphia May 29-June 1—registration closes this week.  Other opportunities include updates to the Field Schools page on our website from the University of Oregon, as well as a workshop on wooden churches in Ukraine and a symposium at UVA.   

Members have been very busy in the field in the past few months, with a report from a 2018 Ridout recipient Alyssa Kreikemeier on work in Utah.  Members have also shared wonderful news of publications, photography exhibits,  and work on analyzing historic photos of vanished vernacular landscapes.   To round out the issue is the Spring Bibliography is packed with useful resources that span the disciplines that contribute to vernacular architecture studies.  Thanks as always for the contributions to the newsletter, please keep them coming!

Christine Henry, Newsletter Editor

Thinking of VAF’s 40th Annual Conference, Landscapes of Succession in Philadelphia, May 29-June 1?  Registration closes on Friday, May 10^th and we would love to see you there!  This conference explores the successive and overlapping built peripheries of the city, from the early 18h century to the present. Through a study of the zones around the city core, we take conference goers on a journey along the arteries and into the formerly peripheral urban zones that are now incorporated into and transformed by surrounding urban fabric. The conference documents the blurred divisions between city and countryside, commercial and residential, rich and poor neighborhoods over a landscape shaped by the rivers, railways and trolley lines, and interstates. For more information, check out the Winter 2019 issue of VAN

For registration and details including full abstracts, go to the VAF Philadelphia webpage.

Throughout the conference, Ambassadors from the University of Mary Washington will be talking to attendees about what VAF means to them and then posting short video and/or audio clips to our social media pages.

If you’re approached by an Ambassador, please help them by participating! Thank you.

And if you’re not joining us in Philly, be sure to follow along…

 VAF Facebook

 VAF Twitter

 VAF Instagram

We update our social media pages throughout the year, not just at the conference, so follow along for exciting VAF news and please share with a friend or coworker!

by Alyssa Kreikemeier

“If you want to understand people of the past, don’t trust what they said about what they did, look at what they did.” -Tom Carter

James Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life closes with a line that repeats this sentiment, nearly verbatim when Deetz writes, “Don’t read what we have written, look at what we have done.”(1) I read Deetz’s words this fall I geared up for my orals exam in material culture for the PhD in American Studies at Boston University. Despite the rich examples that filled the preceding 200+ pages — gravestones and foodways, pottery and porcelain — these words called to mind a landscape far from New England when I read them.

Before I’d taken a dive into the literature, I put Deetz’s advice to work under the tutelage of Tom Carter during a field school in Utah this past summer. The Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship enabled me to spend one July week rolling up my sleeves to document historic properties with perhaps the most widely established authority on Western vernacular landscapes.

In the July heat, my BU colleague Maddie Webster and I headed West to learn how to do measured drawings on a diversity of buildings including: mid nineteenth-century Mormon homes, an intermountain barn, and the Silver King Mine located above Park City. Riding along with Tom we covered a diversity of landscapes. We visited agrarian valleys that house the earliest traces of Euro-American settlement, a suburban development encasing a large barn, and the hybrid landscape of Park City where nineteenth-century miner’s houses can still be seen along narrow streets covered with the glitzy veneer of a resort town.

After long days of dedicated documentation, measurement, and drawings, we continued the learning through rich conversation over dinner. We discussed what we’d seen, historical questions that had been raised, challenges and insights gained through drawing, and biographical tid-bits. In addition to the field work, Anne Oliver generously set up a visit to SWCA Environmental Consultants so we could see how field work is of use outside of academic scholarship. We met Kate Hovanes and learned about the kind of work historical consultants do in cultural resource management. The 5-day field school offered Maddie and me exposure to not only the technical skills of measured drawing and career pathways, but the conceptual world of material culture and the historical context of the intermountain West. The remainder of the report follows as a photo essay including examples of the drawings we produced.

---

1 Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten., 260

On 23 March 2019 the New England Chapter of the Vernacular Architecture Forum held its twenty-first Annual Meeting at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  This year’s program again had a thematic focus, entitled Landscapes of Diversity: The Cultural Complexity of New England’s Built Environment.  Over seventy attendees heard not only an interesting and varied range of papers but also a report on past and upcoming field trips.  Ritchie Garrison provided a brief overview of the upcoming 2021 VAF meeting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, whetting our appetites while hoping to enlist assistance from Chapter members.  See full program here.

The first field trip for this year is scheduled for Saturday 8 June 2019 to Harrisville, New Hampshire.  Historic Harrisville executive director and Architectural Historian Erin Hammerstedt will lead a tour of the National Historic Landmark mill village with a focus on the twenty-first century issues that challenge the preservation of this nineteenth-century industrial landscape.  In the afternoon, the group will visit Aldworth Manor, a stuccoed villa crafted from a Greek Revival home originally located in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Erin will be joined by Aldworth Manor owner Shane Long and architectural historian Peter Michaud for a tour of the manor which is being rehabilitated using the federal preservation tax credit program.  Look for the announcement with full details later this month.  The chapter is also planning for two additional field trips in the fall.

On March 1, 2019 the 10,000^th document was added to the APT Building Technology Heritage Library, a free on-line archive of period architectural trade catalogs, house plans books, and technical building literature. The Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL) is a project of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) and is hosted by the Internet Archive. The 10,000^th document was a 1904 tile, and terra cotta, and fireplace catalog from a French Company: -- Emile Muller & Cie.  This document is from the collection of Prof. Miles Lewis of Melbourne Australia, the latest of several private libraries that have been added to this increasingly international archive.  Mike Jackson, the co-chair of this project said “This product catalog is a perfect example of the wonderful resources APT is making available to the public.  It is a beautifully illustrated and comprehensive overview of ceramic tile and architectural terra cotta available in turn-of-the-century France.  This is also a rare document that could only be found in a couple of research libraries and is now available to everyone.”

Why is this being done?

The Association for Preservation Technology recognized the value of period trade catalogs and other technical publications as a primary research tool for its members. There were only a few institutional collections of these materials, which made them difficult to access. APT saw great benefit to a comprehensive online digital archive to serve a broad audience of preservation practitioners, advocates, historians and students.  These materials are in the pubic domain and made available to the public at no charge. The scope of the collection ends in 1963 as materials after this date are still under copyright protection.

Where do these materials come from?

These documents come from various library, museum and private collections.The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) was the first major contributor. As the first partner in the BTHL, the CCA has shown noteworthy leadership in architectural and preservation education.  Two other major institutional libraries that have partnered with APT are the Southeast Architectural Archive at Tulane University and the Avery Library at Columbia University. The BTHL has also digitized numerous documents from private collectors. Two examples include the paint catalogs from the collection of conservator Mary Jablonski Building Conservation and the house plan catalogs from the collection of Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Officer James Draeger.

How are these materials being used?

“The Building Technology Heritage Library’s collection of scanned trade catalogs is an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners alike.  It is the go-to source for primary resource material related to building technology.  APT was wise to invest the time into creating this valuable collection and we are grateful to our initial stakeholders: the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Historic Preservation Education Foundation, the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.”

Anne Sullivan, School of the Art Institute, Chicago

---

A few comments from our users:

Subject: Pyrobar rehab

“This library is an invaluable resource. Working on a seven story 1923 building in West Virginia I was asked by the architect what this material was surrounding the elevator shaft. I told him it was Pyrobar and provided the US Gypsum Catalog scan showing that it had a two-hour rating. He used this as documentation for the fire marshal. It saved the project the cost of removal of the material and constructing a modern two-hour fire rated drywall wall. They were appreciative to say the least.”

Subject: Serendipity! 

“I was reviewing a terra cotta question with someone in the office, so of course turned to the BTHL. In scrolling through quickly to find a good example to illustrate our conversation, I happened to see a photo of another terra cotta building that we were working on at the time! This serendipity was so lovely, and of course, so helpful!”

Subject: Great Source! 

“I love the early examples of glass block found in this catalogue, it really paints the picture of the material originally being thought of as glass brick. Thanks for putting it online!”

---

About the Association for Preservation Technology (APT)

APT is a professional membership organization with more than 1,500 members in 30 countries. This project was not begun by a library or archive, but by a professional association whose members are major users of historic architectural trade literature.  The work of practicing preservation professionals often starts with an investigation of historic records.  Records of existing buildings and places are maintained in many locations, but technical documents describing building products and assemblies that are the substance of architectural trade catalogs are not widely distributed. The Association for Preservation Technology was in the forefront of recognizing the value of these materials, and even reprinted a few catalogs of these in book form and in early issues of the APT’s journal, The Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology.  Only a few major trade catalog collections exist in contemporary architectural libraries. This initiative by APT will has created an on-line archive of these historic technical documents, which will make has made them useful to the widest audience.

The Department of Architecture and Conservation of the Lviv Polytechnic National University in Lviv, Ukraine, in conjunction with USA facilitators Myron Stachiw (architectural historian) and Yuri Yanchyshyn (furniture conservator), are hosting a two-week workshop from June 24 to July 6, 2019.  The goal of the workshop will be to teach participants how to conduct a conservation assessment: to examine, assess, and document a wooden structure, in this case the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, an early 17th century log church in Rohatyn, Ukraine.  In 2013 this structure was listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List with 15 other wooden churches in the Carpathian Mountain region of Ukraine and Poland (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1424/).  

The workshop is open to students and recent graduates of art and architectural conservation programs, programs in historic preservation, art and architectural history. It will encompass the assessment of wood as the primary material of this art and architectural form, as well as the paintings on timber walls, the iconostasis and icons. This assessment will take the form of a highly detailed condition report, to which all attendees will contribute. 

In addition to the assessments, participants will visit a conservation studio conducting the conservation of a 17th century iconostasis; visit and tour other sites; and will attend lectures / seminars by U.S., Ukrainian, and international practitioners in the field on the history of the wooden churches and their interiors, wood and its properties, wood identification, construction methods, documentation procedures, preservation issues, and other topics. 
 
Additional details of the workshop can be found at
 https://www.periodfurnitureconservation.com/workshop

For an overview of wood conservation in Ukraine please visit
 https://www.periodfurnitureconservation.com/speaking-arrangements/fulbright    

The cost of this workshop is $700.00, which will include accommodations, some meals, and all ground transportation. Airline travel to and from Ukraine is the responsibility of the individual participant.

For more information: please contact Myron Stachiw at mostachiw@gmail.com.

To apply: please send a short cover letter and CV to Myron Stachiw mostachiw@gmail.com.

Application deadline: May 17, 2019

Please join our alumni, students, and friends as we gather for a symposium featuring paper presentations in honor of Richard Guy Wilson’s scholarship, teaching, and mentorship, and as we celebrate the Department of Architectural History’s present and future.

Fri. 11.15.19
Paper Sessions presented by Architectural History alumni and students, followed by remarks by Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History. Join friends and classmates for architectural history conviviality on Friday evening.

Sat. 11.16.19
Paper Sessions presented by Architectural History alumni and students, followed by a celebratory reception honoring Richard Guy Wilson at the newly restored Rotunda.

More information about the event and registration will be coming soon - For up to date information, visit www.arch.virginia.edu/events/rgw-symposium-fall-2019 

We look forward to seeing you all in Charlottesville in November!

To honor founding member Orlando Ridout V, who died in 2013, the Vernacular Architecture Forum has established a fieldwork fellowship in his name. Orlando, a mentor to so many of us, asked that donations in his memory be made to the VAF to support students’ and VAF members’  fieldwork training and activities. To fulfill his request, the Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship was created, combining contributions to the Ridout memorial fund with the former Fund for Fieldwork, established by a generous gift from long-time VAF member Thomas Carter in 2012.

The Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship will support and encourage students and VAF members in their field-based research and documentation projects, and in their efforts to learn and conduct fieldwork through apprenticeships, field schools, and continuing education and training projects.

The guidelines for the Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship allow all VAF members, as well as students participating in field school programs, to apply to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee for monies to support their field-based projects and training opportunities.

Support is available in five categories:

1. Field school directors (VAF members) may apply for grants of up to $1000 to support their programs and/or provide financial aid to participants;
2. Students participating in field schools or other training opportunities may apply for stipends of up to $500 to attend such programs (prior VAF membership not required);
3. VAF members may apply for grants of up to $500 to support continuing education and professional training activities.
4. VAF members may apply for grants of up to $1000 for support of fieldwork activities related to the pursuit of academic degrees;
5. VAF members may apply for grants of up to $1000 to support fieldwork activities not related to fulfillment of academic degree requirements;

Projects that explore and document cultural diversity are especially welcome.

Grants to Field School Directors   

Grants of up to $1000 are available to field schools organized and directed by VAF members.  These awards may be applied to program costs and/or stipends to participants at the discretion of the field school director.

Application Process 

Completed applications by field school directors should be submitted electronically to the Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee between January1 and September 1, 2019, to support programs that will be run during 2019 or over the winter intersession period of 2019-2020; a decision will be rendered in a timely manner after receipt of the request.  The application should define the scope, methodology, objectives, and expected outcomes of the field school. A final report will be submitted to the Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the field school describing the outcomes and impacts of the field school; if the funds were used to provide scholarships to individual participants, a list of the students who received the scholarships and amounts awarded should be included.  In addition, individual field school participants who received scholarship awards from the Field School Director should submit a brief report (up to three written pages, images, video, etc.) directly to the Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the field school discussing how the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship enabled them to obtain an understanding of fieldwork and how it will contribute to their future work/career. 

Grants to students participating in field schools or other training opportunities

Grants of up to $500 are available to students currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs who will be participating in field schools or other training opportunities.  Prior membership in the VAF is not required.  A one-year student membership to the VAF will be provided to grantees if they are not already members. 

Application Process 

Applications should be submitted electronically to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee by the student applying to or accepted to a field school during 2019 or during the winter intersession of the 2019-2020 academic year.  Applications should be received by the Committee at least one month prior to the start of the field school.  The cut-off date for receiving applications is December 1, 2019.  The application must include a description of the field school/training program to which the applicant has applied (name and location of the program, director, dates); a description of what expenses the grant will cover; the applicant’s CV; a letter of recommendation from a faculty member, field school director, or employer; copy of the letter/email of admission to the field school; and a brief essay on what the applicant hopes to learn, why the particular training is important, and how it might influence the applicant’s later academic and professional career.  If the applicant applies to the VAF for support to attend a field school prior to receiving notification of admission, such notification must be submitted before the grant can be awarded.

The grantee will provide a brief, but substantive, report (up to three written pages, photo essay, video, or other presentation) to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the field school about the field school experience and how it has benefitted the grantee and increased his/her understanding of the importance of fieldwork as a research activity.

Grants to VAF members to support continuing education and professional training activities.  

VAF members may apply for grants of up to $500 to support continuing education and professional training related to fieldwork.

Application Process 

Applications should be submitted electronically to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee by the applicant at least one month prior to the start of the program.  Applications will be accepted between January 1 and December 1, 2019.  The application must include a description of the program to which the applicant has applied (name and location of the program, director, dates); a description of what expenses the grant will cover; the applicant’s CV; copy of the letter/email of admission to the program; and a brief essay on what the applicant hopes to learn, why the particular training is important, and how it might influence and/or further the applicant’s career.  If the applicant applies to the VAF for support to attend an educational/training program prior to receiving notification of admission, such notification must be submitted before the grant can be awarded.

The grantee will provide a brief, but substantive, report (up to three written pages, photo essay, video, or other presentation) to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the educational/training program describing how it has benefitted the grantee,  increased his/her understanding of the importance of fieldwork as a research activity or ability to conduct such work, and the future benefits that the acquired knowledge/experience will bring to their work.  If possible, be specific about how the new knowledge will be applied.

Grants to VAF members for support of fieldwork activities related to the pursuit of academic degrees    

VAF members may apply for grants of up to $1000 for support of fieldwork activities that are related to the achievement of an academic degree.

Application Process

Applications should be submitted electronically to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee by the applicant between January 1 and December 1, 2019, and at least one month prior to the start of the project.  The application must include a description of the fieldwork project to be undertaken (nature of the resource(s) to be studied, methodology, expected outcomes and impact, project timeline); a description of expenses the grant will cover; the applicant’s CV; and a letter of support from a faculty member or academic advisor.

The grantee will provide a brief, but substantive, report (up to three written pages, photo essay, video, or other presentation) to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the project.  The report should describe the contributions made by the project with regard to fieldwork methods, deeper investigation of specific resources, and professional development of the participants.

Grants to VAF members for support of fieldwork not related to pursuit of an academic degree  

VAF members may apply for grants of up to $1000 for support of non-academic research projects involving fieldwork related to a publication, exhibition, etc., or for preservation-related fieldwork such as documentation of threatened resources. 

Application Process

Applications should be submitted electronically to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee by the applicant between January 1 and December 1, 2019, at least one month prior to the start of the fieldwork project.  The application must include a brief essay describing the resource(s) to be studied, the reasons for undertaking the fieldwork, methodology to be employed, expected outcomes and impacts; the applicant’s CV; if partnering with an organization, please describe the organization and include a letter from the organization describing their involvement and any contributions they might make (financial or otherwise); at least one letter of support for the project.

The grantee will provide a brief, but substantive, report (up to three written pages, photo essay, video, or other presentation) to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee within three months of the completion of the project describing the outcomes and impacts of the project on the resource, community, and/or their own understanding of and ability to conduct fieldwork.  The report should describe the contributions made by the project with regard to fieldwork methods, deeper investigation of specific resources, and professional development of the participants.

Reports submitted by grantees to the VAF Ridout Fieldwork Fellowship Committee maybe submitted at the discretion of the Committee Members for posting on the VAF web page, blog, or newsletter (VAN).

Catherine Bishir was recently honored in an article titled “Changing Courses,” in Carolina Journal. Author J. Michael Welton delivers an accessible narrative of Catherine’s professional life and underscores how it has evolved from fairly modest beginnings. So it’s very encouraging for those of us who are still making our way toward one or even many professional goals. Welton’s conclusion is that Catherine Bishir has become far more than North Carolina’s most influential architectural historian. With “unstinting facts and impeccable prose," Catherine has actually “altered the arc of [the state’s] cultural heritage.” How’s that for a worthy life’s work?