Notes from the Field: Projects Supported by the Fund for Fieldwork

 A generous donation by long-time VAF member Thomas Carter launched the Fund for Fieldwork in 2012, and in 2013, VAF put the FFF into practice. The Fieldwork Grants Committee made two awards through the FFF in support of members’ field-based research. 

The first grant to Edward Chappell provided funding for his investigation and field recording of an endangered, late seventeenth-century building in Bermuda. Chappell’s work in Bermuda continues to expand what we know and understand of early building practices and social constructions in the Atlantic world.

Photo Courtesy of Edward Chappell

 The cottage recorded by Chappell is believed to have been a slave quarter, and fieldwork revealed that the present stonewalls enclosed the original timber framing.

Photo Courtesy of Edward Chappell

The second grant awarded by the Fieldwork Grants Committee also went to encourage the documentation of a regionally significant property, this time in upstate New York. Janice Medina’s continued study of a nineteenth-century house through the field notes she takes to better understand the property’s evolution neatly frames the kinds of projects the Fund for Fieldwork underpins. Medina’s fieldwork will draw a more nuanced understanding of interior design and room use, and the committee was honored to facilitate her work on-site.

Photo courtesy of Janice Medina

Photo courtesy of Janice Medina

Changes to the FFF made in the winter 2013-14 will enhance its flexibility and expand its support of field research and of training in fieldwork. Look for it in summer 2014 under its new name: the Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship.