Luray Caverns Virginia - Heritage Village (Not Just Caverns #3)

...continuing with our Fall 2024 road trip and it's last 2 or 3 days, which were spent in Virginia.  After visiting Luray Cavern's toy exhibit and completing our pilgrimage through their great automobile collection, it was time to move on to our last attraction at the Cavern's complex.

This is the Shenandoah Heritage Village at Luray Caverns... The building visible through the arch is the Luray Valley Museum.  The Village itself is a 7 acre recreation of a small farming community from the 1800s.  It consists of restored historic buildings, some moved and reassembled, cottage style gardens and a small vineyard.  The setting is striking as well with an attractive mountain range in the distance.

The Luray Valley Museum focuses on the display of early decorative arts, clothing, early toys and varied artifacts of daily life ranging from the 1750s until about 1920.  The view above shows decorative side plates from early iron stoves.  I've always been fascinated by these apparently popular yet unnecessary bits of early decor from early European settlements.

This is a close up of one of those stove side plates.  This one came from a 5-plate stove that dated back to the 1740s in Pennsylvania.  It depicts a "Samson and Delilah' theme.  This ornate design is based on a German Bible wood cut that depicted Samson carrying the Gates of Gaza...and then to the left he's reclining on Delilah's lap.  

The wording across the bottom of the side plate is taken from the Book of Judges Chapter 10.  To quote "When at last Delilah learned how to overcome Samson's strength, she brought him to it on her lap".  I know the oft quoted story but the wording above is certainly vague and open to interpretation.   

Laurie and I both love these old cast iron stoves.  If time, money and space weren't obstacles, we'd collect both stoves and side-plates.  They really are utilitarian works of art.  

This is a Six Plate Stove with a heart and tulip motif.  Six Plate stoves were the earliest of American 'leg' stoves.  It's German-American and it came from the Warwick Furnace in Pottstown Pennsylvania.  Early stoves stuck to religious themes and the German reference above translates to "Eschew evil and do good".  Later stoves remained ornate but they contained less biblical imagery. 

Why another stove photo?  Mainly because I really like these decorative and purposeful creations.  This is a Ten-Plate Stove.  Built ca. 1808, it was made by the Isabella Furnace located at Pine Furnace Pennsylvania.  The phrase on the side plate reads "Liberty Be Thine", a popular phrase during the American Federalist period.

Laurie and I love stoneware but quality stoneware is just a bit pricy so we only own a couple examples of this craft.  But nothing stopped us from gazing at this handsome display and appreciating the variety and quality of the stoneware.

More stoneware...this time displayed in an antique corner cabinet.  Corner cabinets, with their triangular shape, were designed to fit into corners in the kitchen, thereby eliminating wasted space and providing needed storage.  Some were very fancy with glass panels at the top to secure 'better' china or flatware but many simpler versions were built for use by farmers and settlers.

This is a hand painted 'dower' chest, aka a hope chest or dowry chest.  They were once commonly used by unmarried young women to collect items, such as clothing and household linens, in anticipation of married life.  

This particular dower chest was painted in 1798 by Johannes Spitler. (1774 - 1837) He likely painted it for young Barbara Lionberger, a member of the local community in Page County Virginia.  Spitler is known to have taken traditional Swiss-German designs and then transformed them to more playful abstract designs.  His works were prolific from the mid-1790s until 1910 when he moved to Ohio.

Early painted dowry chests are very collectable and many can be found as part of art exhibits in major museums.  As collectables, you can find them on-line for anywhere around $600 or $700 up to $3,000 or more.

I like quilts but Laurie loves quilts!  She took this photo of a bevy of quilts in the museum.  Upper left: Album type applique quilt from ca. 1850 with 16 hand-stitched patterns.  Upper right: Shenandoah Valley tulip and rose quilt from ca. 1860.  Middle left: A quilt made in 1840 and donated from a local family.  Middle right: A quilt made between 1845 - 1848 that was given to a woman by her friends with 'well wishes' notes in each square.  Bottom left: A mid-1800s Blazing Star quilt donated by a local family.  Bottom right: Another mid-1800s quilt with coordinating pillow covers...also donated by a local family.

More stoneware but this time the varied pieces are displayed on one of the largest 'pie safes' I've ever seen.  The origin of the pie safe is traced back to the early 1700s in America.  It was probably introduced by German immigrants aka Pennsylvania Dutch and these pieces of utilitarian furniture was an important item in American homes through the 1800s.

The doors and sides of a typical pie safe were usually ventilated with tiny punched holes that allowed air to circulate, but protected bread, pies and other perishable items from insects and rodents.  As you can see in this example, the holes were often punched to produce a desired image.  This particular pie safe has a lot going for it from a collector's point of view.  It is large, it has the original paint and the punched pattern in the tin is very intricate.

Laurie took this photo.  The display is apparently dedicated to the ladies back in the day.  Note the dress or hoop form, the fancy blouse, that handbag, lots of needlework, a variety of hats or bonnets, the baskets, boots and more.  Of particular note is the clay pipe on the hatbox at the lower right of this picture. 

I'll end this post with a reminder of just how busy housewives were in the early days of the USA.  Premade clothing was too expensive for the average family so sewing skills were a necessity.  To make clothing one needed not only material but also thread.  This is easily the largest and most ornate thread display case I've ever seen.  I also discovered that there was a reason for it being so fancy...

The Brainerd-Armstrong Company was a silk mill based in New London Connecticut...so this wasn't your everyday cotton thread display.  The company made the finest thread, used for fancy clothing as well as embroidery.  I found references to this thread which is still coveted by those who love to embroider.  I was unable to find out much about the company, surprising given the size of the factories I did find photos of.

I found much more about Diamond Dyes...the fancy cabinet with the painted tin vignettes at the right of the thread display.  The company was a leading dye company in the late 1800s and into the early 1900s.  It was known for its prolific print marketing strategies and the company printed colorful chromolithographic trade cards, almanacs and pamphlets. Diamond Dyes was based in Burlington Vermont.  Their parent company was Wells Richardson and Company...which manufactured food colorants and wholesale drugs.  Both companies began to decline after the Federal government passed the Food and Drug Act in 1906 and operations ended completely in 1942.  The cabinets and marketing materials from Diamond Dyes are highly collectable today.

That's all for now... Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave