Way too early to think about Christmas I think, but it is starting to feel a bit cozy, and this is the last of the drawings I pulled from a wonderful notebook by Elmer S. Hill of Haydenville MA, so here is it. I really love that each of the four stockings hung by the fire is of a different size, and that the fire grate looks like a canoe, and I like that drawing of the chair best of all. Dated 1887 at upper right.
I have found a definitive record of Elmer Hill, born on 7 March 1874, in Erie, Pennsylvania, United States to David Warren Hill and Annie Pauline Goss, both from New England, and it seems in Erie only for a brief time as the rest of their lives were living in and around Northhampton, MA, including in Haydenville, which he notes on one page of the notebook, which has a date of 1887, so he was about 13 when he made these drawings. Hill married, had two sons, and died on 29 December 1973, in Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts, United States, at the age of 99!
Paper measures 8 1/16” x 6 5/8”; pencil and crayon/colored pencil on faintly lined paper. Paper has darkened a bit over time, is a bit brittle, and shows a few light smudges and stains, but no foxing, generally clean and in good condition. Blank reverse.
