We're offering a break from the snow and winter weather this week and sharing a glass lantern slide image of the gardens bordering a spillway pond at the Hill Girt farm of Harry and Elizabeth Haskell in Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania.
The photograph was taken by William C. Spruance on June 30, 1923. It's distinctive coloration is the result of the autochrome process, an early technique for producing color photographs that relied on dyed grains of potato starch.
Spruance was an electrical engineer, a company executive on the board of directors of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and a civic leader in Wilmington, Delaware. Spruance was also an amateur photographer and used these skills to photograph his wife Alice Lea Spruance's gardens, as well as the gardens of other wealthy residents of New Castle County between 1920 and 1925.
Most of the gardens he photographed were those of fellow members of the Wilmington Garden Club. As an advisory member of the club, Spruance displayed his work in several slide lectures presented to the organization in the early 1920s.
More images from the Hagley’s W.C. Spruance lantern slide collection (Accession 1984.217) can be found in our Digital Archive by clicking here.