Art News

New Hampshire Man’s Maple Collection Makes Up Bulk of Museum

BETHLEHEM, NH (AP).- To know Charlie Stewart was to know his maple collection. Old sap buckets and yokes, sugar molds, spouts, yards of tubing, tin syrup containers — he had it all. Along with old postcards and bottle memorabilia, the longtime Sugar Hill syrup farmer gathered hundreds of maple-related items throughout his lifetime. Many date back to the 1800s. Stewart, who died in 2006 at age 77, frequented farm auctions and antique shops and put ads in local weekly papers in pursuit of anything maple. He paid whatever it took for an item “so that it didn’t end up on a wall in a house in California,” said friend and fellow maple farmer David Fuller of Lancaster. Stewart, who left his collection to the The New Hampshire Maple Producers Association, wanted to preserve the past and hoped to feature his collection in a museum one day. Now, it is. A sampling of the many items — they have yet to be catal