Domestic Furnishings - Overview
Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.
The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.
"Domestic Furnishings - Overview" showing 3 items.
1760 Eve Van Cortlandt's Quilted Counterpane
- Description
- Eve Van Cortlandt's fine white linen quilted counterpane is one of the earliest dated American quilts in existence. The date, "1760" and her initials, "E V C," are embroidered in blue silk cross-stitch on the quilt lining. Quilted with white linen thread, a delicate pattern of flowers, feathery stems, and low open baskets surround a central quatrefoil medallion. The design is set off by a background of quilted parallel lines just one-eighth inch apart.
- Eve was born on May 22, 1736, to Frederick Van Cortlandt and Francena Jay each from families of wealthy and prominent New York landowners. She made her quilt for her dower chest while living in the family home. In 1761, Eve married the Honorable Henry White, a businessman and a member of the King’s Council of the Royal Colony of New York. He became president of the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1772 and remained loyal to the King of England during the Revolution.
- When the British evacuated New York in 1783, Henry moved his family to England. Henry White died in London in 1786, and Eve returned to America as a widow, most likely to be near two of her children who lived in New York. Of their five children, two sons were in the British service and remained in London, as did one daughter. Eve died in 1836 at the age of one hundred, having witnessed a century of historic events. Since 1897, the family home in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx has been a museum.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1760
- quilter
- Van Cortlandt, Eve
- ID Number
- 1979.0184.01
- catalog number
- 1979.0184.01
- accession number
- 1979.0184
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tall Case Clock
- Description
- The earliest domestic clocks in the American colonies were English-made "lantern" clocks, with brass gear trains held between pillars. Along with fully furnished "best" beds, looking glasses, sofas, silver, and case furniture, such clocks were the household objects consistently assigned the highest monetary value in inventories of possessions.
- By the 18th century, the most common style of domestic clock came to look more like a piece of household furniture. A wooden case enclosed the movement, weights, and pendulum. Through a glass window the dial was visible.
- In 1769, Pennsylvania clockmaker and millwright Joseph Ellicott completed this complicated tall case clock. On three separate dials, it tells the time and shows the phases of the moon; depicts on an orrery the motions of the sun, moon, and planets; and plays selected twenty-four musical tunes on the hour.
- The musical dial on the Ellicott clock allows the listener to choose from twelve pairs of tunes. Each pair includes a short tune and a long one. On the hour only the short tune plays, but every third hour, both play. During a tune, automaton figures at the top of the dial appear to tap their feet in time to the music, and a small dog between them jumps up and down.
- Joseph Ellicott moved from the Philadelphia area to Maryland in 1772 and, with his brothers Andrew and John, set up a flour-milling operation in what is now Ellicott City. The clock was a centerpiece in Ellicott family homes for generations.
- Who else owned clocks in early America? Clock owners, like the American colonists themselves, were not a homogeneous group. Where a person lived influenced the probability of owning a timepiece. In 1774, for example, New Englanders and Middle Atlantic colonials were equally likely to own a timepiece. In those regions, roughly 13 or 14 adults out of 100 had a clock in their possessions when they died. Among Southern colonists at that time, only about 6 in 100 had a clock.
- Date made
- 1769
- user
- Ellicott, Joseph
- maker
- Ellicott, Joseph
- ID Number
- 1999.0276.01
- accession number
- 1999.0276
- catalog number
- 1999.0276.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Esther Copp's Sampler
- Description
- Three block alphabets; two alphabets colored in pairs, one all black; no "J"; numbers 1 through 0. Simple geometric crossbands framed by flowering vine and rose bushes. At base of sampler, centered tree flanked by two framed inscriptions, with tulips and strawberries. Single row of cross stitch forms border on all four sides. Silk embroidery thread on linen ground. STITCHES: cross, petit point, Algerian eye, rice, queen. THREAD COUNT: warp 34, weft 38/in.
- Inscriptions:
- "Better it is to be
of an humble Spi
rit with the low
ly than to divide
the Spoil with
the proud"
- "Esther Copp her
Sampler made in
the eleventh
year of her age
august AD 1765"
- Background:
- Jonathan Copp was born on June 12, 1694, and married Mrs. Sarah (Dennis) Hobart as his second wife on June 30, 1742, in Stonington, Connecticut. Their daughter Esther was born on October 23, 1754, in New London, Connecticut, and she never married. She died September 21, 1829. (See sampler by Phebe Esther Copp, her grandniece. A tree, rose bush, and one text are the same on both samplers.) Esther's sampler is part of an extensive collection of 18th- and 19th- century household textiles, costume items, furniture, and other pieces belonging to the Copps, a prosperous but frugal Connecticut family. The collection was donated to the United State National Museum in the 1890s by John Brenton Copp, offering the nation the opportunity to preserve and study the everyday possessions of a New England family.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1765
- maker
- Copp, Esther
- ID Number
- TE*H06590
- catalog number
- H06590
- accession number
- 28810
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center