Everyone who has endured a Michigan winter agrees that a Michigan summer is the universe’s way of making it up to you. Having completed my first winter at Cranbrook, then, it seems a shame that I missed the glory of summer in the Mitten State. I was called back to my home state of California to celebrate my mother’s birthday (a milestone year that she wouldn’t appreciate having publicized on the internet) and to enjoy a few solid weeks of family reunions, state-wide road trips, and delicious, delicious tacos. I traded the sun and heat of Southeastern Michigan for the fog and chill of Northern California, but at the end of the day I still managed to find a little bit of Cranbrook in California. Continue reading
Photo Friday: The Other Cranbrook
Coppersmith’s shop, Cranbrook, England. July, 1901. Henry Wood Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
In 1901, Henry Wood Booth, Cranbrook founder George Gough Booth’s father, took this photograph of the shop in Cranbrook, Kent, where his own father had worked as a coppersmith before moving to Canada with his young family. A handwritten note on the back of the photograph, which is held in the Henry Wood Booth Papers at the Cranbrook Archives, explains that the copper tea kettle hanging from the door was made by Henry’s grandfather (the original George Booth), who also made his trade as a coppersmith. Three generations (and a whole lot of people named Booth) later, George Booth’s great-great-grandson George Gough Booth would build an entire campus around the idea of promoting the applied arts, naming it “Cranbrook” in honor of this town and community.
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 