Special to Times
This October, the Nichols House Museum is celebrating the Arts & Crafts Movement with a series of public programs.
Highlighted during these programs will be new items in the museum collection crafted by the youngest Nichols sister, Margaret Homer (Nichols) Shurcliff.
At a time when woodworking was an unusual profession for a woman, Margaret ran her own furniture-making business and taught woodworking classes. These pieces, gifted by Margaret’s descendants, are now a permanent part of the museum collection. Along with woodcarving and embroidery created by her sister Rose Nichols, they help tell the story of the Nichols sisters: artists and activists living on Beacon Hill at the turn of the 20th century.
Margaret learned basic carpentry skills as a girl while attending the progressive Mrs. Shaw’s School on Marlborough Street. She later continued her education in the MIT carpentry workshop, the only woman in her cohort. As an adult, she taught woodworking classes, initially at the Ellis Memorial settlement house, and later from her homes on Beacon Hill and in Ipswich, Mass. Beginning in the 1920s, she ran a furniture business, Pegleggers, handcrafting Early American-style furniture in her attic workshop at 66 Mount Vernon St.
Carpentry was a shared interest with her husband, the landscape architect Arthur A. Shurcliff, whom she married in 1905. Among the pieces gifted to the museum is a wedding chest Margaret and Arthur crafted on their honeymoon, featuring a curved cassione-style front and painted with their initials. Later, the couple created much of the interior of their Ipswich summer home themselves, including two chairs that are part of the gift to the Museum. The Nichols House was also given a few Pegleggers items, including one of their signature pieces, a low peg-legged stool.
Through the end of October, visitors can view an exhibit about Margaret’s woodworking in the Nichols House Museum shop. The wedding chest and chairs are on view in the museum and can be seen on the museum tour.
The museum’s Arts & Crafts Movement programming includes Autumn Community Day on Oct. 4, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with free guided museum tours and an ongoing, drop-in woodworking demonstration by Ellen Kaspern, a custom furniture maker and instructor at the North Bennet Street School.
‘Transform the World with Beauty’ an Arts & Crafts-themed tour of the Nichols House that takes a close look at pieces made by Rose and Margaret Nichols – follows on Oct. 9 at 6 p.m.
‘The Arts and Crafts Movement on Beacon Hill and in Boston’ – a talk by Nonie Gadsden, Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – then takes place Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. at Grogan & Company, 20 Charles St.
Finally, a ‘Brahmins and Bohemians Arts & Crafts Edition Beacon Hill walking tour’ takes place on Oct. 18, at 10:30 a.m.
Enjoy a stroll around the Hill and hear about some of the Arts & Crafts movement artisans living and working on Beacon Hill, with a discussion that will touch on utopian art communities, artist cooperatives, craftsman architecture on the Hill, and more.
For more information, visit nicholshousemuseum.org.