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About Scott and Joan Joan is an architectural historian with over 30 years of experience researching and writing about historic buildings. Most of the buildings she has studied are in New Jersey, but she is also familiar with those in neighboring Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York.
She is also a folk artist, an avocation that she set aside while raising two children and having a full-time career working with historic buildings. Now that the kids are grown and on their own, she has more free time and has returned to her interest in American folk art. Although he spent most of his working life building bridges, Scott is a third generation house carpenter and cabinetmaker. After retiring, he set up a woodworking shop and began making furniture pieces in styles that were popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He specializes in hanging cabinets, but also makes a variety of tables and standing cabinets and cupboards. |
Joan's Folk Art Training |
JoanI took folk art lessons from her mother, Ruth Berkey, who was an Early American Decorator and a long-time member of the Historical Society of Early American Decoration. From her, she learned false-graining, primitive painting, tole, and theorem painting (stenciling on white cotton velvet or paper). She also took lessons in drawing and oil painting from several other instructors and focused on realistic paintings inspired by the American greats of John Singleton Copley and the Peale family. In her historic townscapes and farmscapes, she combines her two passions of folk art and architectural history.
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Where They Live
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Scott, Joan, and their two cats live in the ca. 1790 Thomas (Jr.) and Zilpah Ludlam House in Cape May County. It's a simple farmhouse that took them 2 1/2 years to restore. It is filled with folk art and primitive style furniture, both antique and reproductions. In 2012, they built an addition to the rear of the house; Joan has a small studio in one of the addition's second story bedrooms. Scott's workshop is out front in a building that dates to the mid-1800s.
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