Twenty-five
years ago, two friends, one a business owner and the other an antiques
appraiser, were at an auction lamenting the sale of local paintings to
people from everywhere but Vermont.
They looked at each other and said, �We should have bought
that picture and kept it here."
Lyman Orton, Proprietor of the Vermont Country Store, has lived and
worked in Vermont all his life. Barbara Trask Melhado, senior
member of American Society of Appraisers and Southern Vermont Art Center
Trustee, spent summers in the state as a child and has made Vermont her
home since
1964.
Orton and
Melhado pursued works by artists who lived and worked in Vermont between
1920 and 1970.
They spent early mornings at openings of
antiques shows, trolling through dealer shops and tag sales, scouting
auctions, and following leads. The hunt took them all over
the state, New England, and eventually the metropolitan
markets of New York and Boston.
The Vermont Country Store formed a permanent collection
to preserve these images of a way of life that was Vermont and,
in many cases, is no more.
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Paul Sample�s oil of
a then common
county fair event,
the trotting races

Gene Pelham's reflective view
of Manchester Center Mill Pond |