Alice van Leer Carrick

Born in 1875, she became known as an American antiques collector and author who published under her maiden name, Alice van Leer Carrick. Reliable sources about her life consistently connect her with Webster Cottage in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she lived with her husband, Dartmouth professor Prescott Orde Skinner, and drew inspiration from the house and its furnishings.

Her best-known work, The Next-to-Nothing House (1922), grew out of her effort to furnish a modest historic home with antiques from the region. She also wrote the Collector's Luck books about antiquing trips abroad, and later published Shades of Our Ancestors, a book on American silhouettes. Sources also describe her as an editorial consultant to the early magazine Antiques and later a contributing editor.

What makes her appealing today is the tone of her work: she treated collecting as an adventure open to ordinary people, not just experts. The surviving descriptions of her writing emphasize charm, enthusiasm, and a gift for making antiques feel personal and alive.