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The ‘Herter Looms’ Tapestry: A Treasure Is Discovered at Waveny House
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For years, Mimi Findlay had thought that the ‘H.L.’ signature on a hunting-scene tapestry hanging in the dining room at Waveny House referred to a member of the Lapham family. That’s understandable, as the tapestry is dated 1912, the year the Laphams had the iconic brick mansion built on their sprawling property that flanked South Avenue (then a popular horseracing road sometimes called the “New Road” to Darien or “Two-mile road,” historians say). Then, earlier this year, as restoration began on the limestone fireplace in Waveny House’s Great Hall—that work undertaken thanks to the generosity of an organization that Findlay had helped found eight years ago, the New Canaan Preservation Alliance—Recreation Director Steve Benko came upon a handwritten note in his archives that quoted a Lapham relative, David Lapham, in reference to the tapestry. According to Benko, Ruth Lapham Lloyd prior to passing and had told this relative that all the wallpaper in the Grand Hall, Dining Room and upstairs and hallway had been done by a firm out of New York City called Herter Looms.
On Tuesday, Benko told the Board of Selectmen—by way of requesting $5,230 in order to have a specialist firm out of South Salem, N.Y. clean, fumigate, re-back and otherwise restore the tapestry—that he looked up ‘Herter Looms’ and quickly found that the firm, and tapestry, “has historical significance.”
In fact, Findlay—herself a thorough local historian—explained in an email to NewCanaanite.com that Herter Looms was a business created by a remarkable 19th and early-20th Century man from an equally celebrated family. “Herter Looms was founded by the artists Adele and Albert Herter in 1909, Findlay said.