Susan Hanway Scott

Susan Hanway Scott loved studying history at Duke University many years ago, and enjoys learning about local history (and seeing gorgeous objects!) while writing the Hunt's antiques column. She considers herself quite fortunate to live between Longwood Gardens and Winterthur. When she's not writing or cooking Susan writes songs and plays guitar.

Susan Hanway Scott's Articles

• Soup With Ceremony

  Winterthur’s Tureens

  Published on 6/23/11
  
  

  Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
  Waiting in a hot tureen!
  Who for such dainties would not stoop?
  Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
  Lewis Carroll (1865) Read More »

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• Native American Artifacts

  Wampum will cost you

  Published on 3/07/11
  
  

  While Edward Hicks’ naïve style painting Penn’s Treaty with the Indians at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a treasure, it doesn’t make us feel that “we were there.” But a wampum belt displayed nearby screams: “My maker might have been in your backyard hundreds of years ago!” Read More »

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• Chester County Furniture

  Published on 12/23/10
  
  

  Newport shells? Check. Shaker room? Got it. New York Classical chairs? Yes. Read More »

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• Earthly Possessions

  A Benjamin Franklin scavenger hunt

  Published on 7/29/10
  
  

  Finding Benjamin Franklin’s possessions scattered around Philadelphia is like a scavenger hunt for the soul of the city and a fun way to explore both the city and the man who has been called Philadelphia’s “greatest brand.” Many of Franklin’s things are in institutions he founded in Philadelphia, where he lived longer than any other place and where he died in 1790. Read More »

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• Chadds Ford’s Cunningham Takes Initiative in The Gambia

  Carol Cunningham develops new project to empower African women

  Published on 4/30/10
  
  

  She has a full life; her own consulting practice, a huge garden and a home in Chadds Ford shared with a hardworking husband, a daughter in medical school and a son in college, elderly parents in England, close friends and neighbors. She’s already helped create a non-profit, Power Up Gambia, through years of steady perseverance. Surely Carol Cunningham needs free time more than she needs to start another non-profit project? Read More »

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• Antique Homespun

  All-purpose rural fabric to expensive eco-chic darling

  Published on 3/29/10
  
  

  Antiques must be the sexiest form of recycling. “Patina” is the richness of age; we all love the warm glow of old silver, the depth of antique woods, and the soft hand of old fabric. As “eco-chic” design grows in popularity, many people long for softer, simpler, “greener” options in decorating, and recognize the elegant role antiques play in that mix. “It’s about mixing natural materials in a sleek and sophisticated way,” says Sylvain Pitre in an online article about eco-chic style. Read More »

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• Dream Garden

  Philadelphia’s Tiffany treasure

  Published on 11/05/09
  
  

  When visitors come, what do you take them to see? When a friend showed us  The Dream Garden in the Curtis Center in Philadelphia, it felt like a secret treasure unveiled. Dream Garden is a 15’ x 49’ glass mosaic, a collaborative venture between Louis Comfort Tiffany and Maxfield Parrish, completed in 1915. Edward Bok, who commissioned the mosaic, called Dream Garden a “wonderpiece, far exceeding the utmost expression of paint on canvas.” Read More »

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• Early Philadelphia

  Portraiture from awkward to accomplished

  Published on 9/05/09
  
  

  Gustavus Hesselius’s 1732 portraits of two Delaware Indian Chiefs hang just steps away from John Singleton Copley’s 1773 portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the vast stylistic difference between these two painters we can see Philadelphia’s emergence from colonial outpost to worldly city. Read More »

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• Pennsylvania Spice Boxes

  Cabinetmakers’ elaborate craft

  Published on 6/01/09
  
  

  In medieval Europe, a pound of saffron cost the same as a horse. Spices were an economic force that carved ancient trade routes over land and 16th-century circumnavigation by sea. From the West Indies and beyond, spices came into Colonial Philadelphia for sale to the wealthy. In 17th-century England, and then in the colonies, valuable spices were often locked up in spice boxes. Read More »

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• Hooked

  America’s humble homemade rugs

  Published on 3/01/09
  
  

  While wealthy colonists like Ben Franklin bought imported oriental rugs for their American homes, poorer and rural households were likely to make their own rugs, turning scraps of worn clothing and leftover yarn into hand-made hooked and rag rugs. Read More »

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