Alice van Leer Carrick

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1875, she later became closely associated with Hanover, New Hampshire, where she lived at Webster Cottage near Dartmouth with her husband, Prescott Orde Skinner. Writing under her maiden name, she published books that grew out of her own experiences collecting and living with antiques, including The Next-to-Nothing House and Collector's Luck.

Her writing helped make antiques feel approachable and personal rather than distant or scholarly. She was especially interested in early American interiors and silhouettes, and she went on to become a contributing editor of Antiques magazine in the 1930s.

She died in 1961, but her reputation has lasted through her books and through local and museum interest in the world she documented. Today she is remembered as both a collector and a storyteller who brought the pleasures of old houses and old objects to a wide audience.