North Bennet joins with Shaker Museum on training
For the second summer, Boston’s North Bennet Street School will team up with the Shaker Museum and Library to offer three two-week training courses in traditional woodworking and carpentry skills…
For the second summer, Boston's North Bennet Street School will team up with the Shaker Museum and Library to offer three two-week training courses in traditional woodworking and carpentry skills at the museum's North Family at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in New Lebanon, N.Y.
The expanded series of hands-on courses bolsters a unique partnership the institutions launched last summer with a two-part pilot program: the village hosted four summer interns from the school's preservation carpentry department, and a course for local preservation enthusiasts on traditional timber frame construction.
Both aspects of the partnership will be repeated this year, thanks in part to continuing financial support from The 1772 Foundation and The World Monuments Fund.
The 2010 courses are for anyone interested in acquiring a foundation of time-honored hand skills that they can immediately put to use. The upcoming courses run from June through August and include Fundamentals of Fine Woodworking, Historic Window Sash Restoration, and Historic Timber Frame Construction and Restoration.
While at the Shaker Village site, the school's interns will work closely with crews from the construction firm of David E. Lanoue Inc. in Stockbridge, Mass. The company specializes in the preservation and restoration of traditional architecture and has been leading the recent restoration of the North Family Brethren's Workshop and 1838 Granary building here.
"Finding historic structures to work on is often difficult," says North Bennet president Miguel Gomez-Ibanez. "So we welcome the opportunity to send our students there to be trained on old buildings in need of repair. We also appreciate using the village as a place to teach local homeowners and preservationists in traditional hand skills."
For information, contact Jourdan Abel at the North Bennet Street School (617-227-0155, workshop@nbss.org) or Geoff Miller at the Shaker Museum and Library (518-794-9100 Ext. 220, miller@shakermuseumandlibrary.org).
