(c) 2014 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Edith Blake Brown

Boston, 1869 - 1907

BiographyEdith Blake Brown (1869-1907) was an interior decorator and designer. She was the daughters of Emma Isadore Clapp and Edward Payson Brown, a lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts. Edith had a younger brother, Harold Gilbert (1875-1954), and her sister, Ethel Isadore (1872-1944), became an artist. Edith Brown studied at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1891-1892. She taught decorative design and art history at the Cleveland (Ohio) School of Art, and has a listing in the book Artists in Ohio. Edith and Ethel studied in Paris in 1894-1896. Between 1896-1899, Edith Blake Brown was listed in Boston city directories as a designer, and she is known to have designed posters and bookplates. Edith, Ethel, and Elisabeth Cornelia Parsons also designed a stained glass window titled “Massachusetts Mothering the Coming Woman of Liberty, Progress and Light,” executed for the Woman’s Building at the World Columbian Exposition. Edith also lectured on design, and wrote at least one article on the subject. Working in conjunction with architect Stanford White, she served as interior decorator for the New York home of her friend Pauline Whitney Paget, for whom she had been a bridesmaid.

In 1899, Edith married John Lincoln Wilkie, a New York City lawyer. They had two sons John L., Jr. (born in 1904) and Neil Wilkie. Edith died in 1907, a month after the birth of her second child. Husband John Wilkie was a partner in the firm Gould and Wilkie, chairman of the board of the Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corp., and was interested in the history of the Hudson Valley.

From http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/HTML_Finding_Aids/COL0218.htm; accessed 2/2/24 NW

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated5/8/24

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