The American Museum in Britain is a bit of the U.S. in the U.K

The American Museum in Britain showcases American decorative arts and Americana on a 120-acre estate.

By Susan Spano, Reporting from Bath, England
06:25 PM PDT, October 23, 2009

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The relationship between England and America may have gotten off to a rocky start, but after the War of 1812, the two nations forged a long-lasting friendship. The American Museum in Britain is a reflection of that bond, a showcase for American decorative arts in the bucolic English countryside.

More than that, though, the museum, on a 120-acre estate a few miles east of historic Bath, is an English center for all things American: gospel music concerts, quilting bees, Fourth of July fireworks, excursions along a Lewis and Clark memorial trail, cowboy encampments featuring a Plains Indian tepee and open-air showings of American films such as "Calamity Jane," a 1953 movie unaccountably popular in England, with Doris Day in the title role and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok.

Bath, the site of an old Roman spa and later a fashionable watering hole, had no particular connection with the English colony that became the United States. But it is where American millionaire Dallas Pratt and his longtime partner, John Judkyn, an English antiques dealer, found a late Georgian mansion with plenty of rooms for displaying their collection of American decorative arts.

It includes show-stoppers only: a stark, soulful cherrywood candle stand from the Shaker colony in New Lebanon, N.Y.; Gilded Age drinking cups made of Comstock Lode silver; a glorious 1847 Baltimore bridal quilt; a perfect 18th century highboy, donated by Henry Francis du Pont, founder of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware's Brandywine Valley; and -- oh, yes -- a cigar store Indian. But like everything else in the museum, this is a priceless piece of art, depicting no ordinary brave but, rather, a Native American princess.

Pratt and Judkyn were inspired to introduce Europe to American decorative arts by such recently founded museums as Winterthur, Colonial Williamsburg and Old Deerfield Village in Massachusetts. Curatorial techniques pioneered at the Smithsonian led them to leave some displays, such as Conkey's Tavern from Pelham, Mass., in a state of disarray to more realistically portray the atmosphere of an 18th century American pub.

The period rooms -- following American arts and culture from Colonial times to the early 20th century -- are true showpieces. But the museum has other attractions, including an herb shop and a garden replicating the one at George Washington's Mount Vernon, Va., estate.

And then there's the Orangery Cafe, which sells big, beautiful chocolate chip, oatmeal-raisin and spice cookies that visitors, American or English, like to eat at umbrella tables overlooking the beautiful Limpley Stoke Valley.

The American Museum in Britain, Claverton Manor, Bath; 011-44-1225-460-503, www.americanmuseum.org.