The scene is one of a quintessential Englishness: a stately manor house with sparkling bay windows giving out upon a broad expanse of finely trimmed lawn that reaches out toward the river Avon in the valley below, an exquisite formal garden with pebbled walks and a delicate fountain, the whole set off against a stone balustrade supporting a majestic row of classical stone urns. But there is something weirdly wrong with the picture nevertheless—what is that huge tepee, with all the children running in and out of it, doing out in front of the manor? Or that rear end of a Pullman car with its observation platform? Or, in fact, that old Conestoga wagon? It’s a double exposure, with the Wild West imprinted sharply upon the green English calm, a schizocultural impossibility that boggles the mind. Yet it is really here.

This is the amazing American Museum in Bath, England, the only serious museum of Americana anywhere in Europe. Far from being put off by the split personalities of the manor house and the examples of traditional American arts and crafts they proposed to fill it with, the founders of the museum took advantage of the contrast to emphasize the originality and strength of the American contribution to the practical and decorative arts of the world. And somehow it works.

The idea of a museum to show Englishmen something of the creativeness of American arts through all the historical periods since colonial days came from two men: an English-born naturalized American, John Judkyn, who was an antiques dealer, and Dr. Dallas Pratt, a New York City psychiatrist. In 1958 Judkyn, who has since died, discovered Claverton Manor, a famous old house at the edge of the Georgian city of Bath, a mansion built in Greek Revival style in 1820 by Sir Jeffrey Wyatville, the architect to George iv. It already had in its history the Anglo-American stamp of Winston Churchill, who gave his first political speech there in 1897. Judkyn and Pratt bought the place, putting in their own money plus contributions raised among a group of rich American acquaintances in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. In association with Ian McCullum, a former architect who became and is still the museum’s director, they installed inside the great squarish three-and-a-half-story manor whole period rooms, including original floors, walls, doors, windows, panelling, and ceilings brought over from the United States. There’s even a colonial Massachusetts tavern, fireplace and all.

The work of putting together the imported pieces was supervised by C. A. Bell-Knight, an antiques conservationist who recalls with some awe the confusion of the job at Claverton Manor: “My first impression was of endless corridors and passages leading to countless dormitories and bathrooms. The vast pile of timbers and miscellany [that had been assembled] presented a colossal nightmarish jigsaw puzzle. I used to dream that I was condemned until eternity to sort out dentils and pilasters, feather-edging and sills each into their respective