Storytelling in Miniature

John Taylor Arms
American, 1887–1953

Street in Borgio

Etching, 1926
4 x 1 3/4 in.
Gift of Doreen C. Spitzer in memory of Mr. & Mrs. Ward M. Canaday, 1976.87

John Taylor Arms’s wife, Dorothy Noyes Arms, recounted the couple’s visit to the town of Borgio, located in northwest Italy on the coast of the Ligurian Sea:

“A distant gray shape against a hill caught our fancy and we stopped at Borgio, a little town as remote from the main highway as it is in spirit from the modern world. We reached it by a narrow road which led, white and glaring, between vineyards and rows of carefully tended trees, which later in the season produce the famous peaches of this section. We came to the outskirts; first straggling houses, then the narrow, crowded dwellings of those who, since ancient times, have clustered close for mutual protection.”