Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi

Posted by on Aug 13, 2026 in | Comments Off on Americana Insights 2025, edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights 2025 edited by Lisa Minardi Americana Insights, distributed by University of Pennsylvania Press, 321 pp., hardcover $64.95 It’s not often that a monumental tome comes along to update and correct the hundred-year-old record of a folk art form. Devoted exclusively to Pennsylvania German redware pottery, volume three of the Americana Insights series examines the work of the most...
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The Hobby That Became a Museum: Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, 1925–2025

Posted by on Aug 29, 2025 in | Comments Off on The Hobby That Became a Museum: Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, 1925–2025 Brothers Henry Landis (1865–1955) and George Landis (1867–1954), the founders of Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum, were descendants of Germanic Mennonite families who moved to the area that would become Lancaster County in 1717. As young boys, Henry and George were encouraged by their forward-thinking parents and several teachers to pursue their personal interests and begin collecting....
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Trailheads

Posted by on Oct 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on Trailheads Charter Day – always the second Sunday in March – kicks off the spring season on the Pennsylvania Trails of History. Public program schedules start to fill up, and the influx of school group visits reaches its peak. Spring lambs and other animal babies make their appearance at sites with livestock programs, and our many gardens show signs of new life as well. For up-to-date...
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Trailheads

Posted by on Feb 25, 2020 in | Comments Off on Trailheads History never truly sleeps on the Pennsylvania Trails of History, but winter is generally a slower season with reduced schedules and fewer programs and events. Charter Day, the celebration of Pennsylvania’s founding (the second Sunday in March), is the traditional start to our spring season. As the weather warms, activity increases at the sites and museums. The landscape loses its dull winter...
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On the Porch with Lester Breininger: The Pennsylvania German Pottery Tradition

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on On the Porch with Lester Breininger: The Pennsylvania German Pottery Tradition It happens every year about mid-August – the annual porch sale in Robesonia, Berks County, at the Victorian-­era mansion of Lester and Barbara Breininger. For more than thirty years, the porch show has drawn diehard pottery col­lectors – and the merely curious – from throughout the country. At 6:00 a.m. the front door of the house opens and the pot­ter, dressed comfortably and...
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