1. "Morse Museum"
Posted by Kat on Oct-17th-03 at 10:03 PM

My friend and I made a trip downtown Winter Park to see the Morse Museum of American Art.  It's better known locally as The Tiffany Museum.  It's about 5 miles from my house.  On Fridays they are open late and free after 4 p.m.  We spent quite a while in the gift shop until it was free-time. 
I had seen a large part of the collection long ago at Rollins College, also in Winter Park, on a high school field trip, 1969.  I still had the beautiful postcards from that visit.
Since then, and much more recently, a wonderful new Museum/Gallery has opened on Park Avenue to house the Tiffany collection and  this chapel was installed (1996-1999) that had been designed and crafted by Louis C. Tiffany for The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893.



Our Lizzie probably gazed at some of it's splendour, and isn't it a coincidence it ended up in the Morse Museum??
The story of it's journey is at:
http://www.morsemuseum.org/tiffchapel.html

That's amazing, thank you Kat.

You were Bordenized again..or is that "Morsed"??

Thanks, Kat.  Cool coincedence.  That hanging light/stained glass thing looks pretty amazing. 

Thanks for the link, Kat.  I loved the Reredos mosaic with the peacocks and grapes -- it just jumps off my screen! 

I notice the Morse gallery also has some Mary Cassatt pieces.  So much of Cassatt's work evokes images of Lizzie for me.  Maybe because so many of her subjects have dark auburn hair ....  or possibly it's the Victorian dress.... I don't know.

According to one biographer, Cassatt's artistic breakthrough came in 1892 when she was commissioned to do a mural for the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Some of her pictures -- two women having tea, a woman at the theatre, a pensive woman seated alone and holding a fan, and one in particular of a woman in a striped wrapper bathing at a sink -- provide intimate glimpses into the life of Victorian women. 

The hanging light barely escaped massive damage by the movers charged with
saving and transporting it to Central Florida, from Long Island.
"The plan was for the disassembled chapel elements to be carefully packed and shipped by a responsible firm to Winter Park.  But the workmen contracted to do the packing decided not to bother.  Atop Tiffany's treasured mosaics, they piled a load of household furnitiure.  They crowned the heap with a truck tire."

Also:
"All the windows, columns, arches, decorative moldings, alter floor, and furnishings ( with the exception of two of the four benches ) are original to Tiffany and most date from Chicago, 1893."
--From my brochure.

I sat on both front row benches.  Maybe one or the other were from the original Exposition.  I had a 50% chance of it!
Is there any other large display from the Exposition still extant?

How the Cross-shaped Light Arrived


(Message last edited Oct-19th-03  12:11 AM.)

Part Of the Display, off to the side


(Message last edited Oct-19th-03  12:15 AM.)

Thanks for the beautiful pictures, Kat.  I don't know how they made heads or tails out of the cross lamp, it looks like it was thoroughly destroyed when it was moved!

I found this article, a theater in Wamego, Kansas had ended up with all these decorative art panels which were found out to have been originally in the 1893 Columbian Exposition.  They're huge, 11 x 16 feet!  Heres the link:  http://www.wamegoweb.com/to/columbian/history5.htm

Recently in Chicago they unearthed pieces of one of the statues that graced the German section of the fair, Germania was her name and she was made of concrete.  http://concreteproducts.com/ar/concrete_chicago_recently_unearthed/

For a little Herstory, I found out about Candace Wheeler.  She originally worked for with Tiffany and went on with her own all women design company in the 1880s.  She oversaw the interior design of the Women's Building at the Columbian Exposition.  This company offers textiles and fabrics that use her designs, pretty cool that they are still available today!


http://www.burrows.com/cw.html

Yes I had read of the Women's Pavillion.  Those links are so cool!  Thanks a bunch!  Really good stuff!

I hope whoever started the thread about the Columbian Exposition has noticed that we are finding pieces of it here and there!

here is a souvenir fan:


(Message last edited Oct-19th-03  5:52 PM.)

Thanks for the great posts, Kat.  That's a "must see" museum for me some day.

I had posted to a thread about the 1893 World's Fair a little while back.  It's not proven Lizzie went.  There was a contest and people voted for Lizzie to win (I'm not sure how that worked), but it's said that she turned the prize down.  (I think she supposedly won a set of classic books instead.) But other sources say she did go and name the 'girls' she went with.  (I kinda think she went.)

There's a website containing a whole pamphlet written by Julian Ralph on the fair.  Ebay offers items from the exposition for sale all the time. 

Rebello, 187:

"Lizzie at the Fair

' Unbeknown to Chicago: Miss Lizzie Borden has been doing the World's Fair with Miss Caroline Borden, formerly of this city, and Miss Alice Buck as traveling companions.'  Fall River Daily Globe, Tuesday, October 3, 1893: 8.
Note: Miss Caroline Borden was probably related to Lizzie. Miss Alice Buck was the daughter of Rev. Edwin Augustus Buck."
.............

I'd like to think Lizzie went to the Exposition as well, after purchasing Maplecroft in July..

After being found "not guilty" in June, she certainly needed a vacation to get away from it all in September (cooler weather?).