Fred Holland Day

Born 23 July 1864; died 2 November 1933. From Norwood, Massachusetts.

Fred Holland Day was the only son of a wealthy merchant near Boston. His work is best known as a publisher, a photographer and as an historian. Day also had an interest in architecture, and was a close friend of the American ecclesiastical architect, Ralph Adams Cram.

Day had a strong interest in the life and poetry of John Keats, and amassed a substantial collection of Keats' books, and he spearheaded the erection of a memorial to Keats in England. Another passion was printing, and, inspired by the revival of fine publishing advocated by Morris and others in the late 19th century, he founded the Boston publishing house of Copeland & Day in 1883, where he took a pioneering role in uniting contemporary art and printing. It was not a mediaeval-inspired press like Morris's Kelmscott Press, but it had strong ties to the Boston Arts & Crafts Movement and to younger members of England's art community. Among his English associates was Aubrey Beardsley - Copeland & Day were major patrons of Beardsley. Copeland & Day were also Oscar Wilde's publisher in the United States, publishing Salome in 1894 and Sphinx in 1899, and they published the American edition of The Yellow Book from 1894 to 1896, as well as Walter Pater's Chile in the House in 1895, and Duke Carl of Rosenmold in 1897. Copeland & Day published 97 works in total.

Outside of bibliophile circles, Day is known best as a leading art photographer of the turn-of-the-century. He developed a style that was a photographic parallel to Whistler. Among his noteworthy photographs are series of young men and women from the immigrant tenements of Boston, and American blacks he encountered on trips to the South. One model Day found among the tenements was the young Kahlil Gibran, later the author of The Prophet, among other works, and Day was instrumental in forwarding Gibran's literary career. Later in life Day also photographed a series of youths invoking the myth of Orpheus and other Classical themes. His artistic depiction of nude figures stirred considerable controversy. Day is also noted for a photographic series of religious subjects depicting the crucifixion and The Seven Last Words of Christ. The Library of Congress and the Royal Photographic Society have the largest collections of his photographs. Day was also very active in promoting the work of other young art photographers, especially with the organization of an exhibition entitled "New School of American Photography" which was shown in London in 1900 to high acclaim. A rivalry with Alfred Stieglitz centered on the promotion of art photography overshadowed the latter part of his photographic career. Day's studio and much of his photographic and art collection was destroyed in a studio fire in Boston in 1904.

In the early 1890s Day oversaw the reconstruction of his family's Mansard-roofed house in Norwood, Massachusetts, into a Tudor-inspired Arts & Crafts mansion. The interiors feature a Queen Anne living hall, Old Colony Style chambers for his parents, and English Queen Anne, Classical and French Empire rooms for his own suite. He also built a Swiss Chalet inspired summer house overlooking the ocean at Little Good Harbor in Maine. After 1917 he seldom left the Norwood home, and he became a recluse following his mother's death in 1922. During these years his interests were devoted to collecting records and artifacts pertaining to his family genealogy and the history of the town of Norwood.

Following Day's death, the house and much of his collection was bought by the Norwood Historical Society, a non-profit, private organization to be used as its headquarters. It is only in recent years that interest in Fred Holland Day himself has been rekindled, and there is now an effort to restore the living rooms and chambers of the house to more accurately reflect their appearance during Day's life. These rooms are the finest of the "Shingle Style" era Boston area interiors that are open today for public viewing. [The two other major Shingle Style houses open to the public in New England are Naumkeag, 1885-86 by Stanford White, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Edna Villa, the Isaac Bell House, by Stanford White, c. 1883, in Newport, Rhode Island, which will open for the first time in Spring of 1998 with restoration work in progress.] Burrows & Company's wallpaper reproduction project of English Arts & Crafts Movement designs from the Fred Holland Day House is part of the current restoration program undertaken by the Norwood Historical Society.

F. Holland Day House. 93 Day St.. ca. 1895 Home of the Norwood Historical Society

J.R. Burrows & Company
P.O. Box 522
Rockland, Massachusetts 02370
E-mail: merchant@burrows.com
Phone: (800) 347-1795; Phone: (781) 982-1812 Fax: (781) 982-1636