19th Century Fashion Holidays at ESE

Yuletide coordinator Thelma Greene

Storrowton Village Museum has been swarming with garden clubs and designers in preparation for this weekend’s Yuletide at Storrowton.

If you didn’t see our last post, Yuletide is Eastern States Exposition’s holiday celebration set in the re-constructed 19^th century Storrowton Village. The event is completed through the generosity of local decorators and Storrowton volunteers. Everyone donates their time and resources to the project in the spirit of Christmas and community togetherness.

 Every year, ESE invites the community to its grounds for this free family fun event. This year’s Yuletide is taking place tomorrow and Sunday, Dec. 7 & 8! There are also Open House Tours and a Lantern Light Tour of the adorned Village during the week.

Yuletide has truly become a popular holiday tradition, now ready to open for its 24^th year. Needless to say, excitement is buzzing all over the grounds for this weekend.

Naturally, we document all aspects of the event, so amid the boxes of evergreen brush, branches of winter berries and Christmas trees, stood me with a camera, ready to capture some great set-up action.

At the beginning of this week, volunteers began hauling in assortments of different materials to their designated areas. The decorators are all assigned buildings and specific rooms to decorate in the Village. Some rooms took a couple days, others took an entire afternoon.

As you can imagine, Yuletide is brimming with innovate ideas for holiday décor thanks to the work of these clubs and designers. They use all natural materials ranging from greens and berries to fruit and fried herbs.

Check out this great arrangement by Merry Mite Gardens!

Merry Mite Gardens of Suffield Conn., decorated the Gilbert Farmstead kitchen. This arrangement used three terracotta clay pots which filled with dirt and stacked on top of each other in order of largest to smallest. The decorator utilized the space between the pots with cedar and balsam branches. Dried grasses were added to give the arrangement some height and dried hydrangeas provided a nice contrast from the greenery. She completed the decoration with a few branches of winter berries for a little holiday accent color. 


There's a lot more where this came from! Come to Yuletide at Storrowton this weekend to see them all. Everyone is welcome to take pictures or notes on the breathtaking displays. If you can't make it this weekend Open House Tours are Dec. 10 - 14, and the Lantern Light Tour is Dec. 11. Get the daily schedule for this weekend as well as hours for next week's tours on our website!

Check out the displays from years past on our Pinterest page!