Saturday, July 2nd… Back from Hildene Art Festival with pictures!

We got back from Vermont this afternoon late, with a few art prints, a glass marvel and a new wallet. We headed for Manchester this morning, which took us through Troy, toward Bennington where we saw these unique pieces of furniture.

We proceeded on to Bennington, where we stopped off at “The Apple Barn” just south of Bennington on route 7. We always stop there for coffee and an apple brownie.

This large basket is directly across the road from The Apple House".

After leaving the Apple House, we toured through the town of Bennington, looking at the statues placed there depicting everyday people on the streets doing everyday functions.

From there, we headed north to Manchester and the art festival to see some or all of the 175 Artisan displays gathered there for the weekend.

A unique little water bowl for the doggies.

Beautiful hand made glass spheres with blazing swirls of color & light inside

They had two large circus tents and artisans outside with their own tents selling their individual art products. There was also a lot of food vendors and a large circus tent, under which, they had the entertainers playing music and singing while we were there. We stopped at every display showing watercolors and oils, bought a few and a hanging glass sphere with bright colors swirled around inside. We also found a guy that did leather, which had another leather wallet like I got at the garlic festival in Saugerties. I haven’t seen another like it since, and Vick said to get it now because you may never find one again. From that festival, we headed to the actual “Hildene” summer estate of President Lincoln’s eldest son.

It was later than we cared for, so we didn’t go in to view the estate, but we did snap a few pictures of the building and service buildings around the estate grounds. We then headed for home, stopping at a little family restaurant called Chauncey’s for a sandwich and drink.

We also stopped later, for a few minutes, at the Bennington Center for the Arts to view Stanley Maltzman’s art, but there was none on display there right now, but did meet the museum curator and discussed their fees and displays. We will return one day to spend the entire day seeing the multi-displays there and the covered bridge museum.

Tomorrow morning, I'll blog a little bit about our return trip and post a few more pictures. It was a nice day today.