DEERFIELD — The parlor has undergone a makeover throughout New England’s history.
Once a multipurpose space for sleeping, cooking, working and eating, it primarily served only eating and entertaining functions by the end of the 18th century. Parlors were once designed to express a family’s social position and aspirations.
The evolution of these seemingly insignificant rooms will be the focus of a forum titled “Company’s Coming: Artifacts and Rituals of Early New England Parlors,” which Historic Deerfield plans for the Deerfield Community Center at 16 Memorial St. on April 2. A group of historians and curators have been recruited to discuss the material culture and functions of the New England parlor, including issues of refinement, wealth, consumerism, power and gender.
The forum is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. The cost is $115 per person, though Friends of Historic Deerfield get in for $95 and people who sign up to become Friends will get membership and entry for $125. The price includes lunch.
“The goal of a well-furnished parlor was to impress guests through a display of possessions, while providing a center for refined activities and rituals such as tea drinking, card playing, dancing, and above all, conversation,” according to a statement from Historic Deerfield.
Kevin M. Sweeney, a professor of American studies and history at Amherst College, is expected to examine how the roles and furnishings of New England parlors changed from about 1720 to 1820. He said something as seemingly mundane as a living space actually serves as a microscope into social changes. How people spent their leisure time, what sorts of decor they spend money on, and how family members interacted with one another have all changed with the times.
Sweeney said in the earliest parlors, the male head of the household usually sat in an armchair called “the great chair” to indicate hierarchy, while others sat on stools or benches.
“That was the social norm of the era,” Sweeney said.
Sets of chairs started to make an appearance in the mid-1770s. Sweeney also said parlors were still formal spaces used for entertaining in the 1820s and 1830s, when they also hosted weddings and funerals.
Ann Smart Martin, a professor of American decorative arts and the director of the Material Culture Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, will focus on the tea table as one of the most culturally charged furniture forms in 18th-century Anglo-America.
Gerald W. R. Ward, the Katherine Lane Weems senior curator of decorative arts and sculpture emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will trace the rise of the popularity of card playing and examine the specialized furniture forms, playing cards, counters, rule books and other items used in this leisure-time activity.
For more information and registration, contact Julie Orvis at events@historic-deerfield.org or 413-775-7179. Online registration for this program is available www.historic-deerfield.org.