$55.00 CAD
– Sold Out| /
Nice early 1900s photo postcard of building that housed Vodon & Sons glass cutting shop.
Sender of this card was John. H. Foster, a rich and well-connected businessman. One of his friends, whom he helped move to this very street, was the celebrated American painter Dodge Macknight.
Labelled on negative ‘Vodon’s Cutting Shop Springhill Mass. 1173” The ‘Springhill’ refers to Spring Hill Road in East Sandwich. Vodon’s was at #6.
Marked in small script in French on photo, on house located behind Vodon’s: “notre maison’ (our house).
Signed on back ‘Bon Souvenirs J. Foster ce 17 Aout’ (Good memories J. Foster this 17th August).
Postmarked 'SANDWICH AUG 17 1910 MASS.' Mailed to Paris France.
Some rust spots on back. Stamp has fallen off.
(Red text is an electronic watermark that is not physically part of the photo for sale)
John H. Foster (1853 – 1935).
In Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, historian Russell Lovell writes about Foster: “Born in the ‘Skiff House’ in Spring Hill, this adventurer went to Amsterdam with a diamond buyer, and with a flair for social life founded a series of dancing schools in European capitals which became fashionable and profitable. He built an eclectic mansion on a hilltop in Spring Hill called ‘Masthead’ where he entertained Grover Cleveland and many others.”
“John had known the American watercolorist Dodge Macknight in Europe and found in 1900 that Macknight had returned to this country and was visiting Cape Cod as a new subject for his watercolors. Through John Foster, Macknight bought the Spring Hill house at 260 Route 6A, formerly the Quaker school of Joseph and Mercy Wing. This he called ‘The Hedges’ and made it his home for the rest of his life. From here he still travelled widely to paint and entertained many famous artists in this home. He became a friend of Isabella Stewart Gardner who bought many of his works.” Gardner hung them in a “Macknight Room” at her home on The Fenway, now the Gardner Museum.
“In 1911 John Foster’s wife Celeste died and John became a more regular Sandwich resident. Chester Foster and his Roumanian wife Iza (Willemot) returned to Spring Hill and occupied the house at 1 Spring Hill Road. It was just across from Vodon’s glass-cutting shop, and these three French-speaking households all enjoyed talking to Vodon with his Belgian French.”
http://sandwichhistory.org/dbayley/?p=542
In 1825…Deming Jarves, a Boston businessman and former agent of the New England Glass Company of East Cambridge, Massachusetts…choose Sandwich because of its proximity to a shallow harbor and the possibility of a canal being built through Cape Cod that would all for the shipment of goods to ports south. The local availability of timber could be used to fuel the glass furnaces. Even the salt marsh hay and grasses could be used for packing material… At its production pinnacle, the factory employed hundreds of men, women and children in various processes of glass making and decoration….In the 1890s, former glass cutters Nehemiah Packwood and John Vodon each set-up their own cutting shops in East Sandwich and produced intricate rich cut glass designs on imported lead blanks.
journalofantiques.com/features/historic-sandwich-massachusetts-town-glass-built/
