Reynoldawith its family home and gardens, experimental farm, village, and woodlandis an excellent example of the Country Place era. This popular destination in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was created between 1906 and 1924 through the collaboration of three talented people: visionary Katharine Reynolds, architect Charles Barton Keen, and landscape architect Thomas W. Sears. With the financial backing of her husband, founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Katharine Reynolds transformed a patchwork of worn-out farmland into a landscape of great natural beauty that includes a formal garden, 16-acre lake, recreational facilities, and some of the finest cropland. The sparkling white cluster of village buildings and their occupants are also integral to this story.

Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories is your invitation to explore Reynolda House Museum of American Art, North Carolina's nationally acclaimed art museum showcasing paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts in the restored 1917 home of tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds and his wife, Katharine. Their sixty-four-room bungalow sits at the center of an estate that beckons thousands of visitors each year to its formal gardens, meadows, woodlands, shops, and restaurants. In this volume, David Park Curry has captured the essence of Reynolda House Museum of American Art through a lavishly illustrated essay that blends Reynolda's fifty years as a beloved family home with her second life as a museum of American art. Using the lenses of time, landscape, home, social context, history, and memory, Curry connects you to the remarkable place called Reynolda. Highlighting the fascinating--and often surprising--stories of the myriad ways signature works of art came into this stellar collection, Martha R. Severns offers insights about the artists, writers, donors, and, most importantly, the museum's founder, Barbara Babcock Millhouse. Each of the eighty concise essays is afforded a generous two-page layout that includes a full-page color image. This beautifully illustrated book takes you through an American place and an American collection. Consider it your personal tour with behind-the-scenes access to all the stories you might wish to learn, but cannot, in the limited span of a single visit to this Museum.

“A tour de force . . . a top-notch study of a powerful couple negotiating the shifting socioeconomic world of the New South and early corporate America.”—Journal of American History Separately they were formidable—together they were unstoppable. Despite their intriguing lives and the deep impact they had on their community and region, the story of Richard Joshua Reynolds and Katharine Smith Reynolds has never been fully told. Now Michele Gillespie provides a sweeping account of how R. J. and Katharine succeeded in realizing their American dreams. From relatively modest beginnings, R. J. launched the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which would eventually develop two hugely profitable products, Prince Albert pipe tobacco and Camel cigarettes. His marriage in 1905 to Katharine Smith, a dynamic woman thirty years his junior, marked the beginning of a unique partnership that went well beyond the family. As a couple, the Reynoldses conducted a far-ranging social life and, under Katharine’s direction, built Reynolda House, a breathtaking estate and model farm. Katharine and R. J. Reynolds “is an engrossing study of a power couple extraordinaire . . . Telling us much about an unusual relationship, Michele Gillespie also provides a new way to understand how the post-Reconstruction New South elite helped construct business structures, social relations, and racial hierarchies. The result is an important addition to our understanding of the industrial South in the North Carolina Piedmont heartland” (William A. Link, author of The Paradox of Southern Progressivism). “Ms. Gillespie uses Katharine’s life and work as a kind of prism through which to view the prejudices and predilections of Southern culture in the 1910s and 1920s.”—The Wall Street Journal

Welcome to a year of sustainable living with renowned ceramicist Christopher Spitzmiller, with advice and inspiration for seasonal entertaining, gardening, tending heritage chickens, and more. Christopher Spitzmiller is known to his many friends and Instagram fans as the ultimate weekend farmer, who raises his own chicks, grows his own flowers, and puts up his own jam, cider, and honey. In his first book, he treats readers to a full year at his country retreat, Clove Brook Farm. Organized into four sections by season, the book begins with spring: the lilacs and appleblossoms, the dovecote with Indian fantail pigeons, Easter lunch, with daffodils and porcelain, and Spitzmiller's recipe for rhubarb pie. Summer brings hydrangeas, dahlias, readying the chickens for the Dutchess County Fair, and a garden cocktail party. Fall focuses on collecting, cider making, an orchard luncheon and a Thanksgiving table, honey-gathering, and planting bulbs. Winter closes the book with holiday decorating, gilding allium, a holiday buffet, and homemade gifts. Filled with tips on creating beautiful seasonal flower arrangements, living with animals, and garden planning, this is a wonderful resource and gift for anyone longing for farmstead living.

"Illustrated with 150 photographs, plans, and drawings, Catherine Howett's engaging study analyzes the singular convergence of influences that occurred in the imagination of a highly unusual woman. The book provides welcome insight into the culture of the New South and into a richly inventive period in the history of American landscape architecture."--BOOK JACKET.