Antique & Vintage Postcards

Four headless mannequins in colonial work dress — linen caps, aprons, and muted wool gowns — gather around a gateleg table strewn with the tools of domestic industry: a wicker basket, candles, scissors, and cloth, while sprays of white lilac brighten the corner of what was once the sewing room of the Sheldon-Hawks House in Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts. The spare, wide-board interior — ochre-trimmed windows framing painted red curtains, a needlework picture on the wall, a tall chest of drawers in the corner — speaks volumes about the disciplined rhythms of 18th-century New England household life. The Sheldon-Hawks House, built c.1743 for Ensign John Sheldon and later associated with the Hawks family, survives as one of Deerfield's best-interpreted period interiors. Color photograph by Walter H. Miller himself; published by his Williamsburg firm under catalog number 28862, this card predates the later Miller/Taylor & Dull collaborations visible in sibling cards from the same Deerfield series.