M to the Second Traditional Cache
OReviewer: As there's been no response to the earlier reviewer note, I am archiving this cache.
If you wish to repair/replace the cache sometime in the future, just contact us (by email, include the GC Code), and assuming it meets the guidelines, we'll be happy to unarchive it.
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Size: 
(small)
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Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania and attended Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Although he was admitted to the Philadelphia bar, Mercer never practiced law but turned his interests towards a career in pre-historic archaeology.
From 1894 to 1897, Mercer was Curator of American and Pre-historic Archaeology at The University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia. A turning point in his life came in 1897 upon seeing a jumble of old agricultural tools and household utensils for sale. Mercer realized how quickly American pre-industrial history was being destroyed by the modernization of the world and began to "rummage the bake-ovens, wagon-houses, cellars, haylofts, smoke houses, chimney-corners, and garrets" for what historians would later call "Americana."
RECONCILIATION OF NORTH AND SOUTH
Mercer collected all kinds of American artifacts and tools from hoes and forks to plows and pottery. In 1913 he began work on a museum to house his growing collection of over 25,000 objects. Today there are over 40,000 tools of more than sixty early American crafts and trades displayed in the Mercer Museum.
As part of his collecting, Mercer became interested in the pottery of Pennsylvania Germans. Concerned that this craft was dying out, Mercer apprenticed himself to one of the few authentic potters in upper Bucks County to learn all about clays, glazes, and kilns. In 1899 Mercer built the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, which still operates in Doylestown today. The designs of the first tiles produced in Mercer's factory were based on 18th century Moravian stove plates, which Mercer himself had collected. Later designs were adapted from American folk-art, such as Native American and Pennsylvania German motifs. By 1900, Mercer had become an important figure in the Arts and Crafts movement in America.
PARING APPLES
Mercer's largest commission was his contract to tile the first floor of the Pennsylvania Capitol. His handcrafted clay tiles cost the State $3 a square foot. The approximately 16,000 square feet of tiles include nearly 400 mosaics that run chronologically from Indian activities and artifacts to more modern devices such as automobiles and the telephone. Interspersed throughout these figurative inlays are mosaics representing Pennsylvania's native fauna and flora.
The concept of paving the Capitol floor with tile mosaics departed considerably from architect Joseph Huston's original plans. From his preliminary drawings of the Capitol, it is clear that Huston initially planned to cover the first floor corridors with elegant marble-patterned inlays as he had seen in the Siena Cathedral in Italy. Huston's decision to use rustic clay tiles is an interesting example of the manner in which vernacular folk-art coexisted, and indeed, was an integral part of the American Renaissance.
Mercer is also recognized for designing one of the most important late Romantic buildings in the country, his home Fonthill in Doylestown. The innovation of this domestic structure lay in Mercer's use of reinforced concrete. Although reinforced concrete was commonly used for industrial buildings (Mercer had already utilized this kind of concrete for his tile factory and his museum), it was an unusual building material for a house. Reinforced concrete, coarse-textured and unconcealed, covers both the exterior and interior of Fonthill. Mercer was one of the first artists in the United States to recognize the aesthetic value of exposed concrete for a modern structure.
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* First To Find: Team Ducky on October 4
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* CAN YOU FIND IT TOO?
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Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ovt oybpx.