The Wallace Nutting Collection of Early American Furniture

In the early 1920s, the Harvard-educated Congregational minister-turned historian, Wallace Nutting (1861-1941), assembled a collection to serve as prototypes for his reproduction furniture business, props in his photographs, and fodder for his scholarship on American decorative arts.  Mr. Nutting’s collection boasts hundreds of objects from everyday life in seventeenth and early eighteenth century New England with a selection of material from the mid-Atlantic and Southern regions.  Nutting cherished iconic pieces such as the Governor Prenze cupboard and the Fuller cradle for their nostalgic representation of Pilgrim life in the early Colonies.  Recent additions to the museum’s collection include Nutting furniture reproductions and construction templates.