Provenance

The wallpaper was installed in the dining room in Wayland where Devens Hamlen, the owner today, had birthday parties. Dev envisioned renewed editions and managed the digital capture of original panels removed from the house for restoration.

Nathaniel Hamlin, age 21 of Brookline, Massachusetts sailed from Boston Long Wharf on the clipper ship Union to Calcutta, and for 6 months while he sailed, almost every day his parents and sister wrote letters later collected in a volume for the family. He returned months later, and made another voyage to Calcutta the next year. Age 23, he sailed from Boston to the Pacific, to Hawaii and then ‘Canton’, China (illustrations tba – map and photo).

He bought the original hand painted wallpaper in China for his family and when he returned, established an import business and lived in Back Bay on Beacon Street. In 1871 his uncle established Mainstone Farm in Wayland, Massachusetts, a family dairy farm with a herd of Gurnsey cows, for about 80 years, and still the Hamlen farm, now with Belted Galloways, beef cattle, five acres of vegetables and a rustic farm stand well loved by the region.