Philadelphia 1769 June 3ᴰ 5ᴴ
Philadelphia’s reputation as Craft Capital inspired us to work together, looking to the city’s historical material culture as a source for contemporary inspiration and meaning as craft practitioners. Is there an object that might convey the complexity of this past, pose questions and challenge us to respond from our present?
The Rittenhouse Orrery is a device intended to demonstrate the relationship of our sun and planets as understood in 1771, the year of its creation by Philadelphia clockmaker David Rittenhouse (1732-1796). Moreover, it represents Philadelphia’s role as colonial America’s center of scientific discovery, economic ingenuity and technological innovation. Its casework, by cabinetmakers John Folwell and Parnell Gibbs, reflects the Chippendale stylings that epitomize urbane British colonial taste. As such, this object presents a complex picture of our city in a moment of revolutionary development and transformation, the confluence of craft and technology laying the foundations for the “workshop of the world”.
The Enlightenment values that the Orrery embodied -a view of nature as absolute and unchanging- have, in the ensuing 200 years of “progress”, proven instead to be relational, chaotic and somewhat incomprehensible. We hope to transverse this distance in the making of Philadelphia 1769 June 3ᴰ 5ᴴ 4′ 43″.
Eden on the Schuykill
Don Miller/Christopher Storb
Eden on the Schuykill
varies, varies; 2014
For Bartram’s Boxes Remix, The Center for Art in Wood, 2014
“He who calls what has vanished back into being enjoys a bliss like that of creating”
Barthold Niebuhr
This installation, a collaboration with conservator/carver Christopher Storb, represents an important shift in my work. John Bartram established Americas first botanical garden. Given access to his 18th century home, we installed an imagined workspace, inviting Bartram to join us in a year of collecting, making and contemplation. Chris and I intuitively inhabited this “not now, not then” space, making oddly anachronistic objects for the ghost study , collecting from the natural environment as the seasons passed.
