Tracey & Drew Engagement Session – Fonthill Museum – 5.23.09

Tracey & Drew live almost across the street from the Fonthill Museum and The Moravian Pottery & Tile Works built by Henry Mercer in Doylestown so it was a perfect place to go do their engagement session. I have driven through the area before but this was my first time on the Fonthill section of the property.

If you are unfamiliar with Henry Mercer, he was a historian and archeologist who was alive in the mid 1800’s to early 1900’s. He collected and preserved items that were used in daily life prior to the industrial revolution that became extinct with the new machines and technologies. He collected almost 30,000 items for which he built a 6 story castle to store them in now known as the Mercer Museum. If you live in the area it is an awesome museum and well worth checking out.

Fonthill, Mercer’s home, is a very unique building unlike anything you see today. It is covered in oddly shaped windows and unusual arches making it a very artistic backdrop for a photo shoot.

First we headed down to a small area in the lawn where there was a concrete pond and some trails leading into the woods.

After that we headed back up to the building to do some exploring.

Next we decided to venture down the trails to see what we could find. There was another house way back in the woods that had some beautiful tiles and sayings on it that appeared to have been a guest house. Unfortunately it has been destroyed by kids with spray paint and is full of broken windows. Normally something like this would make a cool back drop but we decided to keep walking due to the massive amount of broken glass on the ground. Flip flips + Dirty Broken Glass = Bad idea! Back into the trails it was to head towards the Tile Works.

Here you can see a very small sampling of the tiles that can be found in the buildings all over the property.

Last but not least we stopped by the Tile Works to do some photos in the archways that surround the courtyard of the building.

I had a great time with Tracey & Drew and can’t wait for their wedding next May at the Holly Hedge Estate.