Please join us for Grumblethorpe's Opening Day of the Season! Saturday, April 5th , 12  to 4:00pm   RAIN OR SHINE! Grumblethorpe Historic House & Garden 5267 Germantown Avenue at Queen Lane    Make and taste an 18th-century "spring tonic" to ward off colds! Explore Grumblethorpe's house and garden with costumed re-enactors Decorate and plant your own earthenware pot to take home. Story Time and Silhouette Making in the Garden is at 1pm and 3pm. Admission is $5.00 per person, $12 for a family of four. For more information please call 215-880-8620

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William Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 73.  Image of Los forging the sun.

Presented by The Rose Valley Historical Society and The Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks

Saturday March 29th, 2008 7:30 PM Location: "The Old Mill" Old Mill Lane Rose Valley Tickets are $15.00 (per person) Reservations Only: 610-566-4324

Mr. Frank Vagnone, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks and former Executive Director of the Bryn Athyn Cathedral, will present a beautifully illustrated presentation of the fundamental intellectual roots of the International Arts and Crafts Movement (1850-1930).  The images will cover examples of architecture, textiles, furniture, decorative objects as well as pop-culture to show how the design reform of the arts and crafts movement transformed society.  The Bryn Athyn Cathedral will be highlighted during the presentation.

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Three Solo Projects
With highlights from the permanent collection
March 7-30, 2008
Opening receptions First Friday, March 7, 5-9 PM
Part of FiberPhiladelphia, 2008 International Fiber Biennial

Marie H. Elcin, Water, Water, Everywhere
Physick House - 321 S. 4th Street

Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, Keeping it Under Wraps
Phuong X. Pham, Stasis, Extended
Powel House - 244 S. 3rd Street

Thur-Sat 12-5; Sun 1-5
Pay-what-you-wish-admission
Museums are 2 blocks apart

In honor of the founding members of  the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, who were artists as well as charter historic preservationists*, Landmarks is pleased to present three solo projects by artists Marie H. Elcin, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel and Phuong X. Pham. The exhibition, a series of three installations running concurrently at two historic house museums, is part of FiberPhiladelphia, the citywide 2008 International Fiber Biennial. A major international event, almost two years in the planning, FiberPhiladelphia encompasses two symposia and more than twenty-five exhibitions examining the current explosion in the use of textile and fiber materials in the field of contemporary art. Concurrent with the artists' installations, Landmarks will also present fiber-based highlights from the permanent collections of our four historic houses: Grumblethorpe, Physick House, Powel House and Waynesborough.

At the Physick House Museum--the Federal-style home of Dr. Philip Syng Physick, "Father of American Surgery"--Marie Elcin's installation, Water, Water, Everywhere, explores the effect of water as a conveyor of disaster. Elcin's project is based in research about the 1792 Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, during which Dr. Physick remained in the city, treating the afflicted. Through delicate beadwork, embroidery, and screen-printing, Elcin captures the tension of both historic and modern day life. Beautiful on the surface, Elcin's intricate work explores the tension between strength and fragility, life and death--even utilizing the molecular image of the Yellow Fever molecule as a recurring design element.

A block over at the Powel House Museum, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel's installation, Keeping it Under Wraps, is inspired by a piece of tatting by Martha Powel in the collection of the museum. Lathan-Stiefel takes the tiny, precise historic textile and transforms it, using it as a visual counterpoint to the symmetry and formality of the house's Georgian architecture. Lathan-Steifel uses commonplace materials  to give the work a provisional quality: her work commands the space but shuns monumentality.

Also at the Powel House Museum, in what is now called the "ballroom," Phuong Pham's installation Stasis, Extended is inspired by the physical history of the Powel House, which by the turn of the 20th century had become a horsehair mattress factory.  Her piece explores horsehair as a contemporary medium, while referencing the house's decline and rebirth over the centuries. Pham takes this coarse and unglamorous medium and uses it to express subtlety and delicacy in the elegant Powel ballroom.