Vermonters at Work

By Sarah-Lee Terrat

In February, the Vermont History Museum welcomed a new exhibit into its Local History Gallery: Vermonters at Work. The exhibit is a collaboration between Jan Blomstrann, the retired co-founder and former owner of NRG Systems, and Sarah-Lee Terrat, a fine artist and designer from Waterbury.

In the early 2000’s Jan was searching for a fine artist to create custom installation artwork in NRG’s new LEEDS-certified headquarters in Hinesburg. The two met and began a decades-long professional relationship and friendship. Jan’s appreciation for art grew as Sarah-Lee continued to create and procure art for her, and together, they amassed a collection of hundreds of pieces of artists’ work from all over Vermont and New England.

While combing through art galleries, antique shops, and flea markets, Sarah-Lee was attracted to another kind of collection: artifacts and printed pieces from an earlier era of Yankee ingenuity, as well as the Vermont History Center Library’s collection of nineteenth century photos of Vermonters at work. As this historical collection of two and three-dimensional works grew, it found its home in a long hallway between the two buildings of NRG’s growing headquarters.

Vermont has always been a place brimming with innovation, independence, and hard work. Each piece in this collection corroborates the story of inventiveness and energy that Vermonters have always put into their daily routine. It includes examples of antique tools and machinery, advertisements for Vermont farm inventions printed in the nineteenth century, and photographs and paintings of Vermonters at work on the landscape from throughout the state’s history. These artifacts show us how Vermonters learned to carve out a living in on our challenging landscape and often formidable climate.  

The collection includes printed broadsides advertising Vermont inventions that made daily chores more efficient. Some of these inventions (and the language used to describe them) seem rather absurd to us now, but they were at the time on the leading edge, remarkable and helpful contraptions that every farmer must have. These advertisements help us understand the complexity of the chores people needed to accomplish, all before the age of electricity and power tools. It is hard to imagine how much more work there was in any given day! It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come to make daily lives more comfortable and efficient.

Vermonters at Work is presented by Jan Blomstrann, with support from Waterbury Area MakerSphere, and curated by Sarah-Lee Terrat.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of our member magazine, History Connections. To get it and support the Vermont Historical Society, sign up as a member.