Art - Overview
The National Museum of American History is not an art museum. But works of art fill its collections and testify to the vital place of art in everyday American life. The ceramics collections hold hundreds of examples of American and European art glass and pottery. Fashion sketches, illustrations, and prints are part of the costume collections. Donations from ethnic and cultural communities include many homemade religious ornaments, paintings, and figures. The Harry T Peters "America on Stone" collection alone comprises some 1,700 color prints of scenes from the 1800s. The National Quilt Collection is art on fabric. And the tools of artists and artisans are part of the Museum's collections, too, in the form of printing plates, woodblock tools, photographic equipment, and potters' stamps, kilns, and wheels.
"Art - Overview" showing 296 items.
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CIN JOVIS
- Description
- This square blown and molded glass jar has a flared circular collar with a wooden and cork lid. The container is decorated with a baked white enamel cartouche framed by stylized blue leaves and red and yellow flowers . It is marked "CIN JOVIS." According to Urdang, this bottle was made in the last third of the 18th century.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 18th century
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0200
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-05348
- 1991.0664.0200.01
- 1991.0664.0200.02
- collector/donor number
- SAP 57
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Codex Telleriano-Remensis
- Description
- The civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico recorded their histories, religious beliefs, and scientific knowledge in books called codices. Codices are folded pieces of hide or bark that depict both mundane and spiritual scenes with images, symbols, and numbers. Scribes and painters busily recorded daily affairs, filling libraries and temples with books throughout Mexico and Central America. The majority of these illustrated books did not survive the Spanish conquest. But indigenous scribes trained by Spanish missionaries continued writing. While these colonial-era texts were still filled with pictures, over time they referenced the visual language of older Mexican and Maya books less and less. These new books about community histories (including land titles) and secret religious traditions were sometimes bilingual, combining Spanish with either Náhautl (the common language of central Mexico) or a Mayan language, both of which were now written with the Latin alphabet. This image is from an Italian reproduction of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, a manuscript co-written by Spanish friar Pedro de los Ríos about 1550. It documents the religious beliefs, calendar system, traditions, and history of the Tolteca-Chichimeca culture of Central Mexico. Joseph Florimond, Duc de Loubat, (1837–1921) was an American philanthropist who published a series of reproductions of pre-Hispanic and colonial-era Mexican manuscripts, including the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. The Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History houses several reproductions of Mesoamerican codices published for study by French, German, and Italian scholars at the turn of the 20th century.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900
- Associated Date
- 1900
- publisher
- Duc de Loubat
- ID Number
- 2006.0226.37
- catalog number
- 09449
- 2006.0226.37
- accession number
- 2006.0226
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Oath of Vargas
- Description
- Paul Rajon’s print of Le Serment de Vargas is made after a watercolor of the subject by Louis Gallait (1810–1887), not from the oil painting that is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Juan de Vargas is swearing an oath before the Duke of Alva, who was a governor of the Netherlands in the 16th century during the long struggle by the Dutch for independence from Spain, achieved at last in 1648. He pursued a bloody campaign against the Dutch Protestants. Louis Gallait was a Belgian painter of history, portraits, and genre.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 19th century
- original artist
- Gallait, Louis
- graphic artist
- Rajon, Paul-Adolphe
- printer
- Salmon, A.
- publisher
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts
- ID Number
- GA*14912
- catalog number
- 14912
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Boutique Pharmaceutique
- Description
- An engraving by C. Le. Roy of a French apothecary dated 1637. This is the front-piece to the book "Boutique Pharmaceutique ou Antidotaire." The book was published by Nicolas Gay in Lyon in a single bound along with "Les Oeuvres Pharmaceutiques " by Jean de Renou in 1638.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1637
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0060
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-06253
- collector/donor number
- SAP 946
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tire du Cabinet de M. le Brun
- Description
- Etching by Louis Claude Le Grand in 1778, of the interioir of an alchemists workshop. The image is a copy from a series of paintings by Thomas Wyck. Wyck (1616-1677), painted two pieces both titled "The Alchemist" at Ham House.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1778
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0063
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-06262
- collector/donor number
- SAP 955
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mortar
- Description
- Gothic-style, beaker-shaped bronze mortar with an applied square handle and three vertical ribs. The ribs extend from a horizontal rib just below the neck to a horizontal rib just above the base of the vessel. Urdang believed this mortar to be of Germanic origin of the late 15th century.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0092
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-05645
- collector/donor number
- SAP 357
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mortar and Pestle
- Description
- Beaker-shaped mortar with a flaring mouth has five buttress-like ribs alternating between oval medallions decorated with a woman's face. The exterior portion of the flared mouth has a band of stylized stars. The pestle has a T-shaped handle.
- Urdang catalogued this mortar as Italian. Yet in a hand written note found in the mortar Dr. Kisel suggests the mortar is Spanish. Wittop Koning also thought the mortar to be Spanish.
- Interestingly a partial round blue and white paper label glued to the interior of the mortar is marked (Printed and hand written) "VILLE DE .../M A. Ritten.../ notaire/ a Strasbourg/ I/I EXPOSITION DR DINANDE"
- The material that the mortar is made from has a silver-pewter cast typical. The pestle has golden tone and is probably not original to the mortar.
- Medieval Dinant (also spelled Dinand) and Bouvignes specialized in metalwork, producing finely cast and finished objects in a silvery brass alloy, called dinanderie Their metal ware was exported throughout Western Europe and England.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0109
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-05662
- collector/donor number
- 374
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mortar
- Description
- Cast short squat mortar with a flared rim decorated with dots. The body of the mortar has full length figures separated by fish, busts, fleur-de-lis, and flowers.
- Urdang attributes the mortar to 16th century France and the bust to the French King Henry IV.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0111
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-05664.01
- collector/donor number
- 376
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mortar
- Description
- White marble mortar has four carved faces wearing laurel wreaths on their heads serves as handles. The top of the rim has an egg and dart border. The body of the mortar is decorated with carvings of Pegasus and a rider, the profile of a man wearing a toga and lauel wreath on his head, a seated woman wearing a toga and holding a sphere, a second horse with a fishes tail. The top of the rim is marked "VNITA FORTIO VIRITUS"
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0143
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- catalog number
- M-05696
- collector/donor number
- 408
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
BALS MECH
- Description
- This blown and molded bottle has a skinny neck and a flared lip. The bottle has a baked enamel label framed by a Baroque style blue and yellow cartouche. The label reads “BALS MECH” in black text, with the first initial of each word in red. This bottle would have contained the Balsam of Mecca (or Balm of Gilead), a viscous liquid derived from the tree Balsamodendron opobalsamum. Real balsam of Mecca came from the former Ottoman Empire and was scarce, and boiled balsam leaves were often substituted. The balsam of Mecca was used as an antiseptic, stimulant, and vulnerary.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 18th century
- ID Number
- 1991.0664.0303
- catalog number
- M-05452
- accession number
- 1991.0664
- collector/donor number
- SAP 161
- catalog number
- 1991.0664.0303
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center