Tweet
PARTING TRIBUTE TO A 'NUT VISIONARY'
Randall Beach, Register Columnist
New Haven Register, CT
Feb 5 2007
The first time I saw Elizabeth Tashjian, she was dressed in a long,
flowing purple silk gown as she ecstatically flung open the entryway
to her Nut Museum.
Although I was excited to meet her and I got an unforgettable tour,
I had been told not to go there. My wife, who grew up in Old Lyme,
within two miles of Tashjian's home and museum, told me "the Nut Lady"
was old news, tiresome and self-absorbed.
Sometimes you have to ignore your spouse's advice. Sometimes you'll
be very glad you did so.
Yes, I am grateful I was able to spend two memorable afternoons with
one of our state's genuine characters. And now she is gone; Tashjian
died Jan. 28 week at 94.
Sure, she was self-absorbed. Many of our most interesting people are
that way. You just sit back, listen and enjoy the show.
She didn't entertain only the people who found their way to her
museum. She also performed for millions of viewers who were lucky
enough to tune in to Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show" (four times),
"Late Night With David Letterman" and even Howard Stern's show.
All of those museum visitors or TV viewers had the privilege of seeing
her 35-pound double coconut from the Seychelles Islands (it looked
like human buttocks) and hearing Tashjian sing her own composition,
"The Nut Anthem." In her high sing-song voice she rhapsodized:
"Nuts can be so bee-yoo-ti-ful"
But of course Carson and Letterman and Stern were making fun of her.
And the audience was laughing at her.
Hers is a poignant story. I'm not kidding. She spent her life on a
serious artistic mission to educate the world about the beauty and
importance of nuts.
This proved to be an impossible dream.
She was such an eccentric that people kept laughing. They always called
her "The Nut Lady," a name she told me she detested. She wanted to
be known as "The Nut Visionary" or "The Nut Culturist."
She said it was a natural choice for her to come to "the Nutmeg
state." The daughter of wealthy Armenian immigrants, she had been
raised in New York City and first beheld the Victorian mansion in
1950 when she came to visit Old Lyme with her mother.
Tashjian said that when she was a little girl she developed a love
and respect for nuts because her family always had bowls of them
around the house.
Recalling her epiphany for a Connecticut Magazine profile, she said,
"And one day I cracked a walnut, and the way it fell out of its shell,
it looked so beautiful, like a butterfly."
Tashjian, a talented painter who studied at the National Academy of
Design, began to paint nuts at an early age. Her artwork was displayed
at her museum.
Embracing her singular vision, she never married. After her mother
died, she lived alone in that house and in 1972 opened the museum.
She became a familiar figure around Old Lyme. People would see her
riding her bicycle to the market; she never owned a car.
My father-in-law often saw her when he was buying groceries.
Inevitably, to his mounting irritation, their "conversation" would
turn to her TV appearances and nut obsession.
When I mentioned Tashjian to him last week and noted her passing,
he said, "She was a nut."
The double meaning of this word was a source of great sorrow and
frustration to her. Shortly after she opened her museum, she told me,
she was shocked to learn "nut" also means "crazy."
"I almost closed the place," she said sadly. "Instead I changed the
purpose from the mere beautification of the nut to ridding it of its
double meaning."
Her final years were also poignant. In 2002 she was found unconscious
at her home. The courts appointed caretakers for her and they stuck
her in a convalescent home in Old Saybrook and sold her home.
When she awoke from her coma, she was enraged. During my visit with
her at that convalescent home in November 2002, she kept saying,
"I want to go home."
She never did. She died in that facility where she felt imprisoned.
But there were moments of light and recognition and respect in
her later years. Chris Steiner, who directs museum studies at
Connecticut College in New London, saw the importance of Tashjian and
her collection. He gathered it together, exhibited it at the college
and invited her to speak at an opening reception.
For those who joined her that night, and for the 15 people who attended
her memorial service Friday, she was never "The Nut Lady."
She was a folk hero.
From: Baghdasarian
Randall Beach, Register Columnist
New Haven Register, CT
Feb 5 2007
The first time I saw Elizabeth Tashjian, she was dressed in a long,
flowing purple silk gown as she ecstatically flung open the entryway
to her Nut Museum.
Although I was excited to meet her and I got an unforgettable tour,
I had been told not to go there. My wife, who grew up in Old Lyme,
within two miles of Tashjian's home and museum, told me "the Nut Lady"
was old news, tiresome and self-absorbed.
Sometimes you have to ignore your spouse's advice. Sometimes you'll
be very glad you did so.
Yes, I am grateful I was able to spend two memorable afternoons with
one of our state's genuine characters. And now she is gone; Tashjian
died Jan. 28 week at 94.
Sure, she was self-absorbed. Many of our most interesting people are
that way. You just sit back, listen and enjoy the show.
She didn't entertain only the people who found their way to her
museum. She also performed for millions of viewers who were lucky
enough to tune in to Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show" (four times),
"Late Night With David Letterman" and even Howard Stern's show.
All of those museum visitors or TV viewers had the privilege of seeing
her 35-pound double coconut from the Seychelles Islands (it looked
like human buttocks) and hearing Tashjian sing her own composition,
"The Nut Anthem." In her high sing-song voice she rhapsodized:
"Nuts can be so bee-yoo-ti-ful"
But of course Carson and Letterman and Stern were making fun of her.
And the audience was laughing at her.
Hers is a poignant story. I'm not kidding. She spent her life on a
serious artistic mission to educate the world about the beauty and
importance of nuts.
This proved to be an impossible dream.
She was such an eccentric that people kept laughing. They always called
her "The Nut Lady," a name she told me she detested. She wanted to
be known as "The Nut Visionary" or "The Nut Culturist."
She said it was a natural choice for her to come to "the Nutmeg
state." The daughter of wealthy Armenian immigrants, she had been
raised in New York City and first beheld the Victorian mansion in
1950 when she came to visit Old Lyme with her mother.
Tashjian said that when she was a little girl she developed a love
and respect for nuts because her family always had bowls of them
around the house.
Recalling her epiphany for a Connecticut Magazine profile, she said,
"And one day I cracked a walnut, and the way it fell out of its shell,
it looked so beautiful, like a butterfly."
Tashjian, a talented painter who studied at the National Academy of
Design, began to paint nuts at an early age. Her artwork was displayed
at her museum.
Embracing her singular vision, she never married. After her mother
died, she lived alone in that house and in 1972 opened the museum.
She became a familiar figure around Old Lyme. People would see her
riding her bicycle to the market; she never owned a car.
My father-in-law often saw her when he was buying groceries.
Inevitably, to his mounting irritation, their "conversation" would
turn to her TV appearances and nut obsession.
When I mentioned Tashjian to him last week and noted her passing,
he said, "She was a nut."
The double meaning of this word was a source of great sorrow and
frustration to her. Shortly after she opened her museum, she told me,
she was shocked to learn "nut" also means "crazy."
"I almost closed the place," she said sadly. "Instead I changed the
purpose from the mere beautification of the nut to ridding it of its
double meaning."
Her final years were also poignant. In 2002 she was found unconscious
at her home. The courts appointed caretakers for her and they stuck
her in a convalescent home in Old Saybrook and sold her home.
When she awoke from her coma, she was enraged. During my visit with
her at that convalescent home in November 2002, she kept saying,
"I want to go home."
She never did. She died in that facility where she felt imprisoned.
But there were moments of light and recognition and respect in
her later years. Chris Steiner, who directs museum studies at
Connecticut College in New London, saw the importance of Tashjian and
her collection. He gathered it together, exhibited it at the college
and invited her to speak at an opening reception.
For those who joined her that night, and for the 15 people who attended
her memorial service Friday, she was never "The Nut Lady."
She was a folk hero.
From: Baghdasarian