In Memoriam: Don Carpentier, Master of the Useful Arts
Don Carpentier (September 22, 1951 - August 26, 2014)
I was alerted by a mutual friend that Don Carpentier died Tuesday morning at his home in Eastfield Village, NY. He had been battling ALS for some time, yet had been active in workshops at the village this past weekend. I was fortunate to have been one of the huge number who attended classes at Eastfield. He was passionate about wallpaper. Then again, the list of early American crafts he was passionate about, and adept at, would fill a small book. In particular, his contributions to the field of pottery are legendary. Somehow, calling Don's life work "education," "classes" and "historic preservation," while accurate descriptions as far as they go, sound wrong. These words fail to capture Don's vision, which he fully realized, much to our enrichment and his delight. He was perhaps the most insatiably curious man I ever met. He did not so much study history as live it — and appreciate it — and share it. No detail was too small, and Don was always racing ahead to find another detail, just around the corner.
Don was a bottle collector as a child. Having earned a bachelor's degree in historic preservation from the State University of New York, he followed a personal path toward professional growth. He began his life project in 1971 after the inheritance of several acres of land constituting his father's east field in rural East Nassau, NY. He was soon acquiring and moving 18th and 19th century buildings onto the land, board by board. Over many long years, a fair copy of an authentic 19th century village materialized, complete with church, tavern, blacksmith's shop, tin shop, woodshop, doctor's office, shoe shop, pond, general store, Dutch barn, print shop, several residences, and assorted sheds and outhouses. The outhouses were not decorative.
In his hands, this unique collection of buildings was a laboratory. The integrity and age of the buildings, buttressed by Don's burgeoning knowledge about all sorts of undervalued trades and crafts, allowed students of early Americana the opportunity to handle and utilize thousands of architectural elements, tools and typical artifacts of the late 18th and early 19th century. The wallpaper workshops at Eastfield in the summers of 1995 and 1996 were seminal events and were led by Bernard Jacqué, Joanne Warner, Ed Polk Douglas, Matt Mosca, Treve Rosoman, Allyson McDermott, Richard Nylander, Margaret Pritchard, and Chris Ohrstrom, among others. The Eastfield wallpaper workshops were great fun, but more important, they spurred the development of blockprinting in the United States after a hiatus of close to 50 years. At the conclusion of the workshops the reproduction 19th century block printing press created by Eastfield's master carpenters went to the Farmer's Museum for several years before ending up as the first press for Adelphi Paper Hangings, now located in Sharon Springs, NY.
Don Carpentier was a great man. The Historic Eastfield Foundation, an educational non-profit, was established within the last 10 years or so. It would be fitting indeed if the Foundation can succeed in carrying on his legacy.
I was alerted by a mutual friend that Don Carpentier died Tuesday morning at his home in Eastfield Village, NY. He had been battling ALS for some time, yet had been active in workshops at the village this past weekend. I was fortunate to have been one of the huge number who attended classes at Eastfield. He was passionate about wallpaper. Then again, the list of early American crafts he was passionate about, and adept at, would fill a small book. In particular, his contributions to the field of pottery are legendary. Somehow, calling Don's life work "education," "classes" and "historic preservation," while accurate descriptions as far as they go, sound wrong. These words fail to capture Don's vision, which he fully realized, much to our enrichment and his delight. He was perhaps the most insatiably curious man I ever met. He did not so much study history as live it — and appreciate it — and share it. No detail was too small, and Don was always racing ahead to find another detail, just around the corner.
Don was a bottle collector as a child. Having earned a bachelor's degree in historic preservation from the State University of New York, he followed a personal path toward professional growth. He began his life project in 1971 after the inheritance of several acres of land constituting his father's east field in rural East Nassau, NY. He was soon acquiring and moving 18th and 19th century buildings onto the land, board by board. Over many long years, a fair copy of an authentic 19th century village materialized, complete with church, tavern, blacksmith's shop, tin shop, woodshop, doctor's office, shoe shop, pond, general store, Dutch barn, print shop, several residences, and assorted sheds and outhouses. The outhouses were not decorative.
In his hands, this unique collection of buildings was a laboratory. The integrity and age of the buildings, buttressed by Don's burgeoning knowledge about all sorts of undervalued trades and crafts, allowed students of early Americana the opportunity to handle and utilize thousands of architectural elements, tools and typical artifacts of the late 18th and early 19th century. The wallpaper workshops at Eastfield in the summers of 1995 and 1996 were seminal events and were led by Bernard Jacqué, Joanne Warner, Ed Polk Douglas, Matt Mosca, Treve Rosoman, Allyson McDermott, Richard Nylander, Margaret Pritchard, and Chris Ohrstrom, among others. The Eastfield wallpaper workshops were great fun, but more important, they spurred the development of blockprinting in the United States after a hiatus of close to 50 years. At the conclusion of the workshops the reproduction 19th century block printing press created by Eastfield's master carpenters went to the Farmer's Museum for several years before ending up as the first press for Adelphi Paper Hangings, now located in Sharon Springs, NY.
Don Carpentier was a great man. The Historic Eastfield Foundation, an educational non-profit, was established within the last 10 years or so. It would be fitting indeed if the Foundation can succeed in carrying on his legacy.
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