• Gaiety Hollow: Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver

Lord & Schryver Conservancy blog

~ A personal look at the ideas, inspiration, and hard work that go into the Lord & Schryver gardens.

Lord & Schryver Conservancy blog

Tag Archives: archives

A visit to the Special Collections at UofO

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in archives, Gaiety Hollow, Lord & Schryver, Restoration

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archives, Edith Schryver, historic photos, negatives, Volunteering

Yesterday, I made a trip down to the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Oregon. Lord & Schryver’s business papers, photographs, and other miscellaneous items, are stored in the Special Collections. Over the years, our volunteers have made many trips to the Special Collections to find information about Lord & Schryver’s garden designs and to better understand their style and plant choices. Thanks to our volunteers, we have many copies of Lord & Schryver’s materials at Gaiety Hollow.

I am in the process of writing plans for the restoration of the gardens as a whole, and each garden “room” within the whole. Another visit was in order. I was particularly interested in seeing two boxes of film negatives. It had been years since a volunteer had looked at them and I wanted to see them for myself.

boxes

Visiting the Special Collections feels a bit like going on a treasure hunt. Not everything has been cataloged. We keep turning up new bits of information in obscure places.

For example, I found a recipe for French dressing stuffed in an envelope of negatives.

French dressing

I was very excited to find a couple negatives of what looks to be the putto from Gaiety Hollow. We have been wondering what is his story. Based on these negatives, I’m guessing that Elizabeth found him in Italy and brought him back to Salem. I’m hoping that looking through other records will turn up an invoice or receipt for the purchase of the putto. (My apologies for the poor photo quality–these are negatives on a lightbox.)

Putto in birdbath
Putto in birdbath
Putto, back right
Putto, back right

Another great find was a negative of a poster that Lord & Schryver submitted as part of a design contest by the magazine House Beautiful.  I had heard about this image before, but had not yet seen it. The “legend” at the bottom confirms what volunteers had suspected–that the Pergola and grape vine, Parterre Garden, and several flowering trees, were remnants of the Elizabeth Lord’s mother’s garden. Seeing that the piece of land which became the allee with the two oak trees as not included in the designs, I gather that this contest submission was created in the early 1930s. The image of their living room, in the top right, and its description in the legend add insights into their taste and style.

House Beautiful Poster

Contest poster

House Beautiful Poster blurb

Legend

I also found a smattering of new-to-us images of Edith meeting with clients. It’s nice to see images that humanize Edith and Elizabeth and show their professional and personal characters.

Edith with clients Walla Walla

Edith, right, with clients

I look forward to retrieving more information from Special Collections in the coming months and sharing it with you. If any readers have old photographs of Lord & Schryver or gardens they designed, we would love to see them!

 

HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE LORD & SCHRYVER ARCHITECTURAL RECORDS, COLL 098, BOXES 6 AND 7, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES, EUGENE, OREGON.

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Historic roses at Gaiety Hollow

03 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, Roses, Vintage Photos

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archives, flowers, historic photos, historic preservation, Oregon, Restoration, Roses

Earlier this week, I had an epiphany as I looked at historic plans in our organization archives. Years ago, volunteers had Edith and Elizabeth’s hand-drawn plans for the gardens at Gaiety Hollow digitized. I have copies on my computer and refer to them often while doing research and planning. There is a sketch that I have often skipped over because I did not see it as particularly relevant.
ND plan with shrubs coll96_lordschpapers_0020

I had overlooked this drawing because it features a Vitex and Lonicera hedges that were never planted.

However, this week, I had a realization that the information written in the four inner flower beds might be very useful. We know from photographs that Edith and Elizabeth planted these beds with roses–roses that have long since disappeared.

Undated image
Yellow roses and purple pansies. 1960
Yellow roses and purple pansies. 1960

So why could this sketch not tell me which roses Edith and Elizabeth preferred?

With the power of the internet, it didn’t take me long to generate a complete list of the roses on this plan, their type, their colors, and their year of introduction. And they match with our historic photographs.

  • ‘Butterfly’ (aka ‘Golden Butterfly’). Apricot yellow. 1920
  • ‘Sunburst’. Yellow-orange. 1911
  • ‘Constance.’ Golden yellow. 1915
  • ‘Los Angeles.’ Salmon. 1916
  • ‘Augusta Victoria’ (aka ‘Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria’). White, yellow center. 1911
  • ‘Mrs. Aaron Ward.’ Yellow blend. 1907
  • ‘Imperial Potentate.’ Carmine pink. 1921
  • ‘Lady Ashtown.’ Pink. 1904
  • ‘Duchess of Wellington.’ Yellow. 1909
  • ‘Mme. Edouard Herriot.’ Coral-red. 1912
  • ‘Golden Ophelia.’ Medium yellow. 1918
  • Mabel Morse. Golden yellow. 1922

It seems like an easy step forward for us to replant exactly what Edith and Elizabeth specified on this drawing. But historic preservation is never easy! We have no records that indicate these exact roses were ever installed. At the same time, we know that Edith and Elizabeth were critical of their gardens and flowers, frequently tossing out plants that did not meet their high standards. Perhaps these roses were planted in 1932 and then went into the compost heap within the next few years. We may never know. In addition, sourcing old roses can be difficult, as roses frequently drop out of trade as new cultivars are introduced. We might not be able to find these roses for purchase in the USA.

970 nd_roses with brick walk and arbor

Roses in the Flower Garden. Date unknown.

Nevertheless, I am excited about my discovery! The colors match our collection of historic photographs. I will use this list of roses to inform the type and color palette of the roses that I choose to plant in the coming year.

IMG_20170701_091828_027

‘Gruss an Coburg’ purchased by L&S for Deepwood

Many, many thanks to our volunteers who spent countless hours in the University of Oregon archives finding these scraps of information and paving the way for the restoration of the gardens.

Photographs and plans courtesy of the Lord & Schryver architectural records, Coll 098, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.

 

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The Archives

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Lord & Schryver Conservancy in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver

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archives, Gaiety Hollow, Historic House and Garden, Lord and Schryver

I popped in to Gaiety Hollow yesterday to see what the Archive committee was up to…

meeting

Ross Sutherland was conducting business and Ruth Roberts brought in some files from her vast store of research material amassed over 20 years of sleuthing gardens and taking photos…

Ruth's file

Ross Sutherland

I headed upstairs…

stair

to take a look at the “archive room”…this room was Lord and Schryver’s office for all the years they were in business.  It’s over the garage and slightly lower than the full second floor…

archive:officew

The Lord and Schryver Conservancy is just now gathering and relocating materials so that the Archive Room can eventually serve as a central research space for the work of Lord and Schryver.

helvesfile cabinet

Being in the house is fun, but one MUST peek out at the views of the garden, even on a dreary Oregon day…

garden front

garden back

Deepwood Estates recently gifted L&S with Elizabeth Lord’s rocking chair…

Chair

Want to help???  The Conservancy is actively seeking items from the home estate sale in the mid 1980’s, but most importantly PHOTOS of Lord and Schryver, in or out of the garden.  And begin thinking about your possible year end donation…more on that next time!

 

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