What Can A Teapot Teach Us? A Social History Of The Nichols Family Silver Collection

Join us for a free virtual lecture highlighting the Nichols family silver collection through a social history lens.

This program will discuss the ways in which important issues in American society, like immigration and domestic service, can be interpreted through the Nichols family silver collection. This summer’s Julie Linsdell and Georgia Linsdell Enders Research Fellow, Kayli Rideout, will showcase collection objects from spoons to salvers and explore how these examples of decorative arts held social meaning for both the Nichols family and American society at large. This conversation will draw from Kayli’s summer research project, a social history of the Nichols family’s silver collection from the colonial period to the 20th century.

Kayli Rideout is the 2021 Nichols House Museum Julie Linsdell and Georgia Linsdell Enders Research Fellow. Kayli is a Ph.D. student in American & New England Studies at Boston University. Her research interests are centered around American decorative arts of the late-nineteenth century, specifically silver and glass. She has held internships and research fellowships at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the New-York Historical Society, and the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. At the Nichols House Museum, Kayli focuses on the silver collection as objects of a multi-generational family living through periods of rapid social, political, and cultural change.