Charles Gillette designed this bench for the gardens at Keywyn House (later known as Wynandra) on Ampthill Road. (Photo courtesy Bill Nicholson)
Sometimes things are just meant to be.
When Bill Nicholson discovered a garden bench that he thought might have been designed by renowned landscape architect Charles F. Gillette, he could not have guessed at the series of events that would transpire as a result.
Nicholson found the bench online. He says he wasn’t certain it was the real thing, i.e., a Gillette design, but he bought it anyway because he liked it. He took it home to Petersburg, entrusting a local woodworker with its restoration, and began a search with the hope of unearthing the provenance of the bench.
At the time, he told his friend Patsy Pettus about the bench and the possibility that it was a rare surviving example of Charles Gillette’s garden furniture. Shortly afterward, she invited him to join her at a small, private showing of some the artifacts and documents from the Charles F. Gillette archives at the Library of Virginia.
“So I went to that [exhibit], and while I was there. I was starting to think. … They were telling me that his works had never been shown before,” Nicholson says. “I asked about projects he may have done in Petersburg, and they shared those with me. And I thought this would be a brilliant opportunity for Petersburg to have the first public exhibit of Charles Gillette’s works in conjunction with Petersburg Garden Club and the Garden Club of Virginia’s Historic Garden Week.
“I think that a good perspective is that it was just osmosis,” he adds. “It just all happened coincidentally. I got the bench, I went to the library showing of the Gillette archives with Patsy, and then I started talking to Scott Dodson and the people at the Library of Virginia. And I said, 'Wouldn’t it be just wonderful to bring this to Petersburg?' ”
Starting at square one, Nicholson went back to the man who sold the bench to him to ask where the bench came from. The man told him that it came from the Bayliss home on West Avenue and that his wife had worked for the family. With that information, Nicholson enlisted aid from his friend Ed Slipek, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Richmond and Richmonders proved helpful, connecting him to a member of the Bayliss family who was familiar with the history of the bench and the Gillette garden it was made for. She, in turn, put him in contact with Mr. Bayliss’ daughter, who confirmed that his bench is, indeed, a Gillette-designed piece. It was originally one of a pair the landscape architect designed for the gardens he created for Keywyn House (later known as Wynandra) on Ampthill Road in Richmond. Its sister [bench] was moved to the island of St. Croix years ago, where it remains on the front porch of a family home today.
Nicholson’s Gillette bench is on view in “Matters of Scale: Charles F. Gillette in Petersburg,” on view at the central branch of Petersburg Public Library from April 27 through June 30.
