Silver Belles

 

Commemorating twenty-five years of kicking off the holiday season with jolly good tidings and elaborately bedecked spruces, the Festival of Trees at the Berkshire Museum is harking back to its roots. The silver-bells-themed showcase has blossomed, not unlike an ancestral ornament collection, since its humble beginnings in1984, when just fifty trees crowded the Crane Room for a single week. Now, the veritable parade of sparkling wintertime décor includes more than two hundred entries from local businesses, community organizations, and schools (twelve of whom have participated faithfully since the inaugural event), and sprawls across the entire second floor of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, institution for six weeks.

 

This year’s old-fashioned atmosphere is supplemented by a small exhibition of historical photographs of Pittsfield’s North Street scenes from the late 1800s (there’s even a landscape shot of the old Berkshire Life insurance building on the corner of West Street—now home to our Berkshire Living offices), contemporary teapots by Monterey, Massachusetts, silversmith duo Maureen and Michael Banner, and pieces from the museum’s antique silver collection.

 

Nab a first glance of the nostalgia during the much-celebrated opening gala on Friday, November 13—it has become the area’s unofficial start to the season of gingerbread and good spirits. But don’t worry if your pre-holiday weeks turn hectic; the exhibit runs through January 3, 2010. [NOV/DEC 2009]

 

THE GOODS

25th Annual Festival of Trees
Opening Gala
Nov 13 at 5:30
Adults, $12; children, $6
Exhibit through Jan 3
Berkshire Museum
/
Pittsfield, Mass.