The Gallery at Old Salem

Specialties

The Horton Center Museum Shop features museum gifts, souvenirs, books, jewelry and specialty hand-​made trade items from Old Salem Museums & Gardens

History

Established in 1950.

MESDA is the realization of a vision shared by two extraordinary individuals: Frank L. Horton and his mother Theodosia «Theo» L. Taliaferro, who were pioneering antiques dealers and collectors who dedicated most of their lives to raising awareness of and appreciation for domestic objects made in the South. MESDA is the fruition of their aspirations — a museum solely dedicated to the preservation, scholarship, and connoisseurship of southern decorative arts and material culture.

Meet the Business Owner

Frank H.

Business Owner

During the first half of the twentieth century, southern antiques were mostly dismissed by scholars and ignored by collectors. A movement to challenge the existing attitudes — cultivated by a handful of influential southern collectors, dealers, and museum professionals — began in 1949 with the first Williamsburg Antiques Forum at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, which included a seminal session that called attention to the lack of information about southern craftsmanship. The intense study of specifically southern antiques began with the 1952 Williamsburg Antiques Forum, which coincided with the first definitive exhibition of southern furniture, Furniture of the Old South, 1640 — 1820 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and culminated with the opening of MESDA in 1965. Frank Horton did not attend the 1949 forum, but he was an essential contributor to the subsequent events.