Museum accessions.(New York State Historical Association; Fenimore Art Museum)

Few places are as lovely for a summer idyll as the area around Cooperstown in upstate New York. Nestled at the foot of Otsego Lake at the headwaters of the Susquehanna River and surrounded by woodlands and hillsides covered with wild berries and flowers, the town was home to the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, who famously set his five volumes of Leatherstocking Tales in the region and dubbed the lake the Glimmerglass because its crystalline surface was often so still that it was mirrorlike. Today Cooperstown is the site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Glimmerglass Opera, and the New York State Historical Association. The last has recently acquired for its Fenimore Art Museum the view of Otsego illustrated above, which shows the north end of the lake, with Mount Wellington in the center and the town of Springfield in the lowlands at the left. It was painted by Thomas Hicks in 1862, just as the region was becoming a summer tourist destination. Then as now the lake was perfect for swimming, fishing, and boating. One of the earliest recorded outings was organized in 1799 by William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, who arranged for canoes and flat-bottomed skiffs to carry a party of twenty-five to a picnic at Two Mile Point, on the western bank of the lake.

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Hicks set up his easel at Five Mile Point, further up the western shore and the site of the Sleeping Lion Hotel. His view of summer frolickers relaxing or setting off onto the lake beautifully captures the lake's "Glimmerglass" quality.

The two rare and beautiful porcelain plates illustrated here--one French and one Russian--have been acquired by Hillwood Museum and Gardens in Washington, D. C. The French plate, made by the royal porcelain manufactory at Sevres, is an exceptional example from a service referred to in factory records as the service des Liliacees (lily service), the decoration of which was ...