![]() It is where it should be- in Evans City PA – close to the cemetery where the very first Night of the Living Dead was filmed. VISIT: Living Dead Museum/Evans City Cemetery, Evans City Just 75 cents for a Happy Buddha! Open Wed-Sat 11am-4pm, $5. Oh – and the prices at the gift shop are Hong Kong inexpensive. It’s a knockout museum worth a drive from anywhere. But you’ll learn a lot about Asian history and the importance of these figures as well, in the most unlikely of places. The Asian art collection at the Maridon is fascinating on many levels – the most elemental being its stunning beauty and fine craftsmanship. ![]() All are carved in painstaking detail – some quite amusing or racy. There’s a 7 th century painted prancing burial horse, and over 100 miniature Netsuke that once attached to silk purses. Song Dynasty, is set with an intact inkstone, authentic brushes, and curved wooden chair that created a revered “Scholar’s Hump.” A “Scholar’s Table,” dating to the 960 A.D. Though most of Mary’s purchases were 20 th Century pieces for the trade, Frankel added several more important older works. Netsuke miniature carvings once attached to silk purses The set of Quartz Foo Dogs, 650 lb Jade Peacocks, Carved Rosewood Happy Buddha, one of the most extensive collections of German Meissen Porcelain in the world, and hundreds of other pieces of rare art – once stuffed in the finished basement of Mary’s modest ranch house – are now showcased in The Maridon’s beautiful bright galleries. A Rare Find in A Small Town Ivory Carvings, Maridon Museum, Butler PA ![]() They help visitors learn.” So, a visit here is eye opening, educational, and engaging. And she wanted visitors to learn about what they were seeing. Mary was ecstatic about sharing her collection with her hometown. She hired New York City based Asian art expert, Edith Frankel, to design and curate her collection, and was happy to visit her meaningful art in its new home until her death at age 88 in 2009. The Phillips had no children, and knowing that, after her death, her survivors wouldn’t care about the jade, porcelain, and woodcarvings that she had amassed over the years, Mary built a museum (naming it a composite of Mary and Don) in 2004 to house it all. But Phillips had a pert, intellectual mind and a penchant for collecting Asian art. Mary Phillips (who married Big Oil heir, Don Phillips) lived in an unpretentious Butler home and never traveled farther than Atlantic City, NJ.
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