Thursday, May 17, 2012 |
Articles
Many of the most beloved American holiday traditions have their roots in southeastern Pennsylvania, where German-speaking immigrants introduced customs such as the Christmas tree, the Easter bunny, and colored eggs.1 Last year Winterthur Museum was fortunate to acquire one of…
The prominence of the fireplace in Early Republic homes was first driven by the simple necessity to heat the residence. Yet, over time, the design and decoration of the parlor hearth took on its own importance, signifying the wealth and…
For millennia, humans have utilized seating furniture. The earliest surviving three-dimensional depiction of a chair is a clay model dating back to approximately 4750–4600 BCE; the oldest surviving chair belonged to the Egyptian princess Sitamun (Cairo Museum) and dates to…
Since the late nineteenth century, California’s Monterey Peninsula and its wondrous landscape has been a magnet for artists: Its first art colony was settled in 1875 by Jules Tavernier, making it one of the longest established art colonies in the…
At the base of the Blue Hills in Milton, Massachusetts, lies the Davenport-Wakefield house, its stately Federal form providing a fitting setting for its treasure trove of decorative arts collections (Fig. 1). Prosperous Boston merchant Isaac Davenport (Fig. 2) constructed…
Philadelphia is home to the nation’s first medical library, hospital, and surgical amphitheatre, its first medical school, first children’s hospital, and first college of pharmacy. In a celebration of the intersection of medicine and art, the 2012 Philadelphia Antiques Show…
One of the issues that challenge collectors, dealers, and curators alike is how to authenticate a work of art that is not signed by the artist and for which there is no documentation. The portrait shown in figure 1 originally…
Among the earliest pictorial needlework from New Jersey is a group of six created in 1804 by girls who all lived in Burlington County: Ann Stockton (1793–1828) and Sarah Gaskill (1793–1875) were from Upper Springfield; Nancy Platt (1792–?) and Ann…
In the early nineteenth century, the newly minted American republic was a prosperous and dynamic place. Its urban centers were developing rapidly, with a newly affluent population hungry to furnish their homes in the latest styles emanating from Britain and…
Robert Henri (1865–1929) (Fig. 1) is best known as the leader of a rebellious group of artists working in New York City in the early twentieth century who came to be known as the Ashcan School, and as an important…
The gaze of Steven Austin (1793–1836), known as the “Father of Texas” for his role in the colonization of the Lone Star State, is fixed on a wall of Texiana diagonally across the room from where his portrait hangs in…
Set within magnificent grounds in the Sussex countryside, seven miles from the sea, is one of the truly spectacular English country estates. The seat of the Dukes of Richmond and Gordon for over three hundred years, Goodwood remains in the…
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) began as the Art Association of Montreal in 1860. Recognizing that the city lacked art schools, museums, and exhibition spaces, a handful of wealthy citizens formed the association to make art available to…
A notable treasure of the Winterthur Library is the collection of watercolor, pencil, and wash drawings of furniture and house furnishings by the English firm Gillow and Company. Beginning around 1730 as a small, family-run cabinet shop in Lancaster, England,…
What is the result of bringing together Americana collectors, stellar objects, educational programs, and funding for exhibitions and cultural institutions? The American Folk Art Society.Collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Electra Havemeyer Webb, and Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little…
During the 2012 Winter Antiques Show in New York City this past January, the divergent worlds of clockmaker, mechanic, and inventor Stephen Hasham (ca. 1764–1861) were united. Gathered together, quite by accident, was a group of antiques connected to this…
Thirteen artisans gathered in New York on November 17, 1785, to establish the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen, a craftsmen’s mutual aid organization intended to assist brethren in need and promote the significance of manufacturing to the local economy.…
At the twenty-fifth annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1850, Francis William Edmonds (1806–1863) exhibited two paintings, Courtship in New Amsterdam and The Two Culprits, his first submissions since 1848. Horace Greeley visited the exhibition on May…
Over the past quarter century, growing interest in the arts of the South has led to significant research and new discoveries by furniture scholars. Winterthur’s collection has benefited from this research as a number of pieces previously attributed to Northern…
A Flemish walled town is the setting for a scene populated with people all busily engaged in a variety of seemingly absurd and unrelated activities. The meaning of each little episode only becomes clear when one realizes that the artist…
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