On Monday evening, July 15 at 7:30 pm in the Gathering Room, Kendal will be host to David Bayne, the Conservator of the Darwin Martin House.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed a unique residential complex for wealthy Buffalo businessman Darwin D. Martin and his family between 1903-1905. The most substantial of Wright’s Prairie houses in the Eastern US, the Martin House is considered one of his finest achievements of the Prairie period and, indeed, of his entire career.
We will hear about it from furniture conservator David Bayne who will outline the work he has been doing for the house’s furniture collection. Since 1992 David Bayne has been the Furniture Conservator for the NYS Bureau of Historic Sites. A 1976 Reed College graduate, he worked for 10 years as a timber framer, a musical instrument maker, and a custom furniture maker. In 1990, he graduated from the Smithsonian Institution’s Furniture Conservation Training Program. He worked mostly on 18th century American furniture for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, the US Department of State, the Winterthur Museum, and private clients.
If you want to know the history of the kinds of things we sit and sleep on and what goes into preserving them, plus how these beautiful things are being preserved, you should show up at the Gathering Room on Monday at 7:30.