A photo essay. Check out the email version of this story to view all 20 photos.
To clear your head, take a walk through the woods.
To do that downtown, head to the Yale University Art Gallery, where the eastern end of the fourth floor is lush with mahogany, chestnut, cherry and pine.
They’re not like the woods you’d find around East or West Rock, of course. Planted along the walls of Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830, these woods have been cut, carved, fitted and polished into sumptuous chests, bureaus, desks, tables, chairs, clocks and more.
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Yet their setting is no less tranquil, thanks to a feature shared with natural places: a calming soundscape. Lightly, as if far away, the tiks, shhhhhhhhs and toks of chisels, lathes and mallets float through otherwise quiet rooms and halls. Their sources, arranged sparingly around the layout, are mesmerizing videos demonstrating some of the techniques Rhode Island’s colonial-era artisans used to make their legendary furniture.
So not only can you clear your head via Art and Industry, you can also fill it with some fascinating stuff.
Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830
Yale University Art Gallery – 1111 Chapel St, New Haven (map)
Tues-Wed 10am-5pm, Thurs 10am-8pm, Fri 10am-5pm, Sat-Sun 11am-5pm through 1/8/17
(203) 432-0601
www.artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/…
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
