On View
Not on viewFlute Cases
Artist
Walton Ricketson
1839 - 1923
Artist
Daniel Ricketson
1813 - 1898
Dateca. 1880
Terms
- Flute Cases
- Linen
- Silk Fiber
- New Bedford
Dimensions25.38 × 10.15 cm (10 × 4 in.)
Credit LineGift of Mr. Walton Ricketson and Miss Anna Ricketson (1929)
Object numberTH33F
DescriptionLinen case, silk thread. Fashioned neatly of four pieces of cloth. Three tubes were meant to hold the disassembled sections of the flute and get tucked into a pouch with gathered ends which buttoned shut. Case to contain flute, Th33.
Mentioned in a letter from Concord photographer Alfred W. Hosmer to Samuel A. Jones on November 2, 1896: "I will mail you in a day or two, a picture of Thoreau's 'flute, spyglass and Wilson's Ornithology.' The white cloth, which is the flute case, was made by Lucretia Mott's daughter, out of cotton cloth, the cotton for which was raised on their place in Anti-Slavery times, as Mrs. Mott, objected to using anything raised by unpaid, and slave labor."
Hosmer, however, was incorrect in one detail; the case was not made by Mott's daughter, but her granddaughter. A note from Walton Ricketson in the Museum files has this information: "The flute case was originally a part of the garment worn by Lucretia Mott the philanthropist, and was made by her granddaughter Mrs. Davis--The material was woven from flax from their Philadelphia garden. They were Antislavery + avoided anything produced by slave labor."
Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), born Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket, was an influential Quaker minister, anti-slavery activist, pacifist, and proponent of women's rights in general and suffrage in particular. She was early active in the American Antislavery Society and, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an organizer of the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, a milestone in the American women's rights movement. Lucretia Mott lived in Philadelphia with her husband James, a merchant. He was engaged in the cotton trade but left it because of its connection to slavery.
Thoreau heard Lucretia Mott speak at a Quaker meeting house in New York in 1843 and wrote his sister Helen, then active in the Concord Women's Anti-Slavery Society, about her: "Her subject was the abuse of the Bible--and thence she straightway digressed to slavery and the degradation of woman. It was a good speech--transcendentalism in its mildest form."
The case was probably made by either Daniel or Walton Ricketson, after the flute was given to Daniel by Sophia Thoreau.
Mentioned in a letter from Concord photographer Alfred W. Hosmer to Samuel A. Jones on November 2, 1896: "I will mail you in a day or two, a picture of Thoreau's 'flute, spyglass and Wilson's Ornithology.' The white cloth, which is the flute case, was made by Lucretia Mott's daughter, out of cotton cloth, the cotton for which was raised on their place in Anti-Slavery times, as Mrs. Mott, objected to using anything raised by unpaid, and slave labor."
Hosmer, however, was incorrect in one detail; the case was not made by Mott's daughter, but her granddaughter. A note from Walton Ricketson in the Museum files has this information: "The flute case was originally a part of the garment worn by Lucretia Mott the philanthropist, and was made by her granddaughter Mrs. Davis--The material was woven from flax from their Philadelphia garden. They were Antislavery + avoided anything produced by slave labor."
Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), born Lucretia Coffin on Nantucket, was an influential Quaker minister, anti-slavery activist, pacifist, and proponent of women's rights in general and suffrage in particular. She was early active in the American Antislavery Society and, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an organizer of the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, a milestone in the American women's rights movement. Lucretia Mott lived in Philadelphia with her husband James, a merchant. He was engaged in the cotton trade but left it because of its connection to slavery.
Thoreau heard Lucretia Mott speak at a Quaker meeting house in New York in 1843 and wrote his sister Helen, then active in the Concord Women's Anti-Slavery Society, about her: "Her subject was the abuse of the Bible--and thence she straightway digressed to slavery and the degradation of woman. It was a good speech--transcendentalism in its mildest form."
The case was probably made by either Daniel or Walton Ricketson, after the flute was given to Daniel by Sophia Thoreau.
Collections
- Henry David Thoreau Collection
- Photographs
