Mt. Harmon Program: The Architecture of Taste: Building & Cooking in 18th Century Kitchens

The Architecture of Taste: Building and Cooking in Eighteenth Century Kitchens

           Thursday, November 8, 6:30 pm, Mount Harmon Plantation      

 Author and professor Michael Olmert will be speaking about the architecture of 18th-century kitchens and outbuildings, including among other structures the newly restored kitchen that served the 40 workers at the Anderson Armoury and Tin-Shop at Colonial Williamsburg.  It’s an amazing building…with a second hearth on the second floor!

 Michael Olmert

Olmert holds an MA and PhD in English literature and for the last 26 years has been teaching at the University of Maryland, where he lectures on Medieval Studies, Shakespeare, 17th and 18th Century Studies, and Modern British Drama.

He is also an active television, film, and print writer, with five books, three plays, two feature films, an IMAX film, over 90 TV documentaries, three Primetime Emmys, and some 200 magazine articles, reviews, and essays to his credit.  He has also published ten articles in refereed learned journals.

His latest book is on the architecture and cultural history of the eighteenth-century backyard.  Called Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies: Outbuildings and the Architecture of Daily Life in the Eighteenth Century Mid-Atlantic, it was published by Cornell University Press in 2009.  It is based on extensive research in Maryland and Virginia, especially at Colonial Williamsburg.  Olmert also wrote the Official Guidebook to Colonial Williamsburg (1985), on the most-studied 18th Century town in the world.

~ Light refreshments will be served ~

Program Costs: $5