A Visit with Richard & Jane Nylander

His wife, Jane, adds cheerfully, "It's remarkable how many people ask me about wallpaper. They can't tell us apart, I guess." Her husband of 33 years is seated by her side on a rumpled sofa in Historic New England's collections and conservation center in Haverhill, Mass.

The Bacall and Bogart of the preservation field are the president emerita and senior curator of Historic New England, the 95-year-old Boston-based trust formerly known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Historic New England manages 35 historic houses from Connecticut to Maine and maintains a collection of more than 120,000 New England artifacts.

Together (they are rarely apart), the Nylanders have devoted more than 80 years to the study of New England architecture, decorative arts and social history. Their accomplishments include dozens of articles and exhibitions, seven books in multiple editions and scores of professional affiliations. Teaching appointments and lecture engagements have taken the Nylanders around the world. In the South Pacific, they briefly pondered the material cultural of cannibalism, surely a test to Jane's longstanding conviction that food, clothing and shelter explain the past.