Lecture Virtual
Inventing the Gilded Age: Dinner at the Nickerson Mansion
Wednesday, March 23 6:00-7:00 pm CDT ONLINE ONLY Buy Tickets General Public: $20 Members: $15 (ONLINE ONLY)
“The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of great conflict between the old ways and brand new systems, and of huge fortunes made and lost…”
So reads the synopsis of HBO’s new period drama, The Gilded Age, helmed by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame and set in late 19th century New York City. Inspired by the HBO show, this winter we are featuring “Inventing the Gilded Age,” a series of programs that dive into the era of the Nickerson Mansion. One question we will be asking is how faithful The Gilded Age is to the actual historical period.
You are invited to dinner at the Nickerson Mansion. It will most certainly include turtle soup.
To say that the Gilded Age was a grand time for dining would be an understatement. What better way to show off wealth and status than hosting an elaborate twelve-course meal? In this virtual conversation, food stylist Rick Ellis and Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator Medill Higgins Harvey will take us on a course-by-course tour through the sumptuous dinners hosted in Gilded Age palaces like the Nickerson Mansion.
The interplay of food, flatware, and service traditions is central to understanding the fancy feasts of the Gilded Age. What did it take to prepare those multi-course meals? Why did every place setting have so many forks? And who carried out the work to make it all possible? (Hint: It was not the red-suited footmen as depicted in the HBO set photo above.) Our hosts will tell us about the style-setting chefs of the era and their recipes, the elaborate service pieces created by Tiffany & Company and the Gorham Manufacturing Company now on view at the Driehaus Museum, and how serving traditions shaped dining experiences into the 20th century.
Join us in this tempting tale of culinary and decorative arts history in the American Gilded Age.
About the speakers:
Rick Ellis is a food stylist, writer, and culinary historian. Ellis studied architecture at the University of Virginia and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He has styled food for major corporations and magazines such as Gourmet magazine, Sara Lee & Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, and on the big screen in The Age of Innocence. A culinary historian, Ellis is also a collector of American cookbooks with an expansive assortment of titles published as early as 1798 piled on shelves in his New York apartment.
Medill Higgins Harvey is the Ruth Bigelow Wriston Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Manager, The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art. She oversees the collections of American silver, jewelry, and other metalwork, as well as mid-19th century furniture. Harvey joined the staff of the American Wing to direct research for the exhibition Art and The Empire City (2000). She is co-author of Early American Silver in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2013) and contributed to the 2011 and 2009 reinstallations of the American silver and jewelry collections, as well as the exhibition, Silversmiths to the Nation (2007). Her current project is Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.