In your essay, you mentioned the presence of many artists in Folly Cove who had connections to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, yet it sounds like the membership of the Folly Cove Designers largely came from the local working-class immigrant population. How much overlap was there between these groups?

The intersection of the classically trained Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art students with the locals in North Gloucester and the Folly Cove Designers must have been flammable gossip in the day. I would have loved to have been there. Unfortunately, telling the stories now makes it all sound ho hum and dry.

Sculptor Charles Grafley came to Folly Cove at the urging of his Pennsylvania Academy of Art friends Ellen Day Hale and Gabrielle Devaux Clements, who had met in Paris at the Academie Julian, and purchased a summer home together in Folly Cove in the 1890′s, a generation before Burton. These women started the flow of artists from the Academy to Folly Cove. At one point, there were ten artists and three Prix De Rome recipients staying in a Folly Cove boarding house.

Paul Manship, who designed among hundreds of important national sculptures the Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York City, followed his Academy friends to this Gloucester neighborhood, and had a working studio on a quarry here. (That property is now the Manship Artist Residency.)

Walker Hancock, also a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art under sculptor Charles Grafley, came to Folly Cove at his teacher’s behest. Hancock went on to create numerous war memorials including the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial and additions to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His works are in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Capitol, and the Library of Congress. Hancock was also a Monument Man, one of the group of artists sent to the front lines of World War II to protect important pieces of western civilization before the combat began.

The Nattis were a large Finnish family living in the area called Lanesville right beside Folly Cove. Eino Natti became one of the most talented of the Folly Cove Designers. Lee Kingman Natti, that Houghton Mifflin editor and Folly Cove Designer, married Eino’s brother, Robert Natti.

Walker Hancock ended up falling in love with this part of Gloucester, staying, and marrying Saima Natti, Robert and Eino’s sister. (Robert Frost spent a week with Hancock when he was working on the poet’s bust for the Library of Congress; when Hancock learned it was Frost’s birthday he recruited a local woman to bake the cake. Frost sent her a short poem of thanks.)

Burton’s husband George Demetrios—and of course Burton—also came to Folly Cove at the behest of Charles Grafley. The Pennsylvania Academy artists were certainly completely integrated into the community through marriage and neighborliness. Art was as recognized here as much as fishing and quarrying. But what the Folly Cove Designers were creating was always apart from the work of the classical artists who were considered part of the Gloucester and Rockport Art colonies. Burton was among those people, even married to one, and she certainly respected them—particularly her husband’s drawing— but her art rooted itself in the community.

I find it fascinating that the group disbanded and basically liquidated its assets after Burton’s death. What happened to its members after that?

One code the Folly Cove Designers had was that every artist must “pull” their own print, or turn the wheel to the Acorn press to print the piece. The only time that code was broken was when Burton, sick with lung cancer, was too weak to turn the wheel. Eino did it for her.

June Vail, Burton’s niece, spent many summers with the Demetrios’s. In her memoir recording these times, she talks about visiting Folly Cove towards the end of Burton’s life. She draws a sad picture of Burton staying in her bed upstairs while her husband, Demetrios, called to her from below to come down for a whiskey. There were many cigarettes and glasses of whiskey. Vail also remembers stepping into a local drinking hole and seeing Eino Natti there alone at the bar. He never married, and would die ten years after Burton.

According to Elena Sarni’s book, the original members were already aging; Burton was fifty-nine when she died, so they were all around that age. This group recognized that to continue with the Folly Cove Designers would mean stepping up to lead a new generation of designers the way Burton had trained them, and the energy for that was not there. Louise Kenyon continued to carve prints on her own, and also began painting. Lee Natti continued writing books, twenty-nine in all. Libby Halloran opened a shop of her own designs, which remained open until 2001.

Isabel Natti, Eino and Robert’s niece, owned the last of the Acorn presses, and opened a small shop in Rockport, making prints there. When she died, the last of the Folly Cove Designers begged a young woman named Julia Garrison, who had studied printmaking, to take the press and the shop, and try to continue some tradition there. Garrison ran the “Sarah Elizabeth Shop” in Rockport for a few years, but closed it citing the conflict of having to do a job that actually earned her money.

Finally, what’s the legacy of the Folly Cove Designers been like—both locally and in the art world at large—and how would you like to see that legacy continue to evolve in the future?

The quality of the work produced by the Folly Cove Designers across almost thirty years merits an esteemed place in American art. There are masterpieces among these prints. The fact that they are textiles may have mixed the art messaging for a while—is it craft or art?—but I believe people are beginning to recognize the excellence of the designs and the skill; some of these pieces can take your breath away.

The Cape Ann Museum, the recipients of the blocks and remaining works, has honorably dedicated a room to the Folly Cove Designers, and they do much to celebrate this local story, but it was heartening to learn that esteemed textile people like those at Cora Ginsburg LLC were thrilled to learn of this exhibit in New York City. People who know know. Of course, I feel attached to this story, and I know many of the families of Folly Cove Designers. They have their grandmother’s collections stored carefully away in drawers and trunks, but beyond the work, the story of the Folly Cove Designers commitment to the design process, and commitment to their community, neither of which ever waned, is one that I would like more to understand. This was a unique moment in American art history, and the country would benefit from knowing who the Folly Cove Designers were, and what they produced.

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