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 7 items.
1860 Mary McCrea's "Crown" Quilt
- Description
- Two quilted and stuffed blocks help identify this quilt; “M. L. Mc May 24th 1860” (Mary Larson McCrea) and “J Mc” (Rev. James McCrea, her husband). According to family information that accompanied the donation, a close inspection of the quilt even reveals the handprint of one of her children. Other designs in the quilting were inspired by the ferns and flowers gathered near her home.
- This pieced quilt artistically embodies two quilting techniques popular in mid-nineteenth-century America: raised and ground quilting. Sixteen 10-inch blocks, pieced of plain white and printed red cottons in the “Crown” pattern, are set diagonally with elaborately quilted and stuffed plain white blocks in floral patterns. The quilt has a 9-inch border edged by two pieced sawtooth bands, the inner one of the same fabric as the pieced blocks, the outer one composed of green printed cotton. It is quilted with feathered vines. The quilting is 10 stitches per inch, all a fine tribute to Mary McCrea’s needlework and design skills.
- Mary Lawson Ruth, daughter of Samuel and Margaret Ruth, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1835. The family, like many in that period, moved to Ohio where Mary received her education and taught school at Millwood (Quaker City), Ohio. An account of Quaker City, Ohio, describes the early school, founded in 1810, as a log cabin equipped with a few books and a supply of hickory and beech switches, although by the time Mary was teaching in the 1850s the school presumably had improved.
- On July 3rd, 1856, Mary married Rev. James McCrea. A white silk shawl with a white silk embroidered floral border that was worn by Mary McCrea at her wedding was included in the donation. They had seven children.
- She was profiled in family information as an “accomplished needlewoman . . . proven by the exquisite stitchery in the quilt and infants’ clothing.” A baptismal gown, also part of the donation, was made for her first child, Samuel P. McCrea, born in 1857, and subsequently worn by all her children. “She made all of the clothing worn by her family including her husband [his clothes].” James McCrea was both a teacher and ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church. Mary died in December 1880 and is buried in the Murray, Indiana, cemetery. The “Crown” quilt as well as jewelry, infant apparel, and family portraits, were included in the bequest to the Smithsonian by Miss Mary E. McCrea in 1941.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1860
- maker
- McCrea, Mary Lawson Ruth
- ID Number
- TE*T08582
- accession number
- 160721
- catalog number
- T08582
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Chromolithograph, Making the Scrap Book
- Description
- The impulse to clip and save images is familiar to many people, and today there is active interest in scrapbooks. In Juliana Oakley's 1865 painting, "Making the Scrap Book," a girl in a spotless white dress is trimming small engravings for inclusion in the scrapbook at her feet. The setting includes books, furniture, and other pictures that symbolize art and learning. These objects suggest middle-class cultural values and aspirations, while the activity itself indicates the importance of memory and its construction in the post-Civil War period.
- Oakley's painting was exhibited in New York and Philadelphia, where it was purchased by portrait painter G. P. A. Healy in 1865. Healy lived in Chicago, permitting Louis Kurz's Chicago Lithographing Company to reproduce the painting in full color as a chromolithograph in 1868. Chromolithography used multiple lithographic stones for commercial and artistic printing in color. Separate stones were used to print each basic color, and some highlights were added by hand. The Museum's copy of this print has labels from both the Chicago publisher and the New York City retailer indicating its national distribution.
- During the 19th century, many Americans believed in art as an agent of cultural improvement. Specific prints were cited for their civilizing influence, providing moral uplift as well as taste and refinement. Household manuals like The American Woman's Home, published in 1869 by Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catharine Beecher, recommended that prints be framed and placed where they would be seen daily. They cited specific chromolithographs after American paintings as affordable and worthy of contemplation, including Juliana Oakley's "Making the Scrapbook." Looking at such prints, the Beecher sisters argued, invoked a child's powers of observation and imaginative faculties, influencing the formation of individual character and, by extension, the nation.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1868
- owner
- Healy, George Peter Alexander
- graphic artist
- Chicago Lithographing Company
- original artist
- Oakley, Juliana
- publisher
- Jenkinson, Keitz and Company
- lithographer
- Kurz, Louis
- ID Number
- 2001.0074.1
- accession number
- 2001.0074.01
- catalog number
- 2001.0074.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Table by Peter Glass
- Description
- Inlaid with more than thirty thousand pieces of wood, this tilt-top center table was created by German immigrant Peter Glass. As a farmer in Wisconsin, Glass applied his native training as a marquetry craftsman to make award-winning furniture in his spare time. The elaborate octagonal tabletop combines traditional European designs with patriotic American motifs, including portraits of U.S. military generals. In eight oval plaques encircling the piece, Glass also portrayed himself: "Peter/Glass/Maker/Town/Scott
- /Wisconsin/U.S. of/America."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1868
- maker
- Glass, Peter
- ID Number
- DL*281476.0047
- accession number
- 281476
- catalog number
- 281476.0047
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Victor Hugo’s Bedroom
- Description
- Maxime Lalanne’s etching Le Chambre de Victor Hugo shows Hugo’s bedroom in Hauteville House on the Isle of Guernsey. The distinguished French author of works such as Les Misérables left Paris for political exile after a coup brought to power Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III. The print was originally published as one of a suite of twelve to accompany a book titled Chez Victor Hugo par un Passant (At Victor Hugo’s House by a Passer-by). Hugo’s son Charles based his book on the reporting of Edmond Bacot, who visited Hugo in 1862. Lalanne etched this scene after one of the photographs Bacot took.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1864
- publisher
- Cadart, A.
- graphic artist
- Lalanne, Maxime
- photographer
- Bacot, Edmond
- ID Number
- GA*14597
- catalog number
- 14597
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Officer and Laughing Girl after Vermeer
- Description
- Le Soldat et la Fillette Qui Rit is the only painting by Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) that Jules Jacquemart etched. His first attempt to etch a painting in 1861 was a failure, as apparently he had been unable to work directly from the subject. Not until five years later in 1866 did he make a second attempt at etching a painting, this print after Vermeer. It was considered to be one of the best reproductive etchings of the time. The Vermeer painting now hangs in the Frick Collection, New York. But when Jacquemart etched it for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, it was in the collection of Léopold Double, a French artillery officer, bibliophile, and art collector.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1866
- original artist
- Vermeer, Jan
- graphic artist
- Jacquemart, Jules
- printer
- Delâtre
- publisher
- Gazette des Beaux-Arts
- ID Number
- GA*14601
- catalog number
- 14601
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1867 Susan Rogers's Family Album Quilt
- Description
- Embroidered in the lower left corner of this Brooklyn, New York, quilt is the quilter's name, "Susan Rogers," with the date "1867." Each of the twenty-five blocks has a different design and most of them contain an embroidered name or initials of a family member. The quilt was donated to the Museum by the wife of Susan Rogers's great-great-grandson.
- A tree filled with birds is the detailed design of the block containing Susan Rogers's name. On one of the branches there is a robin holding a worm in its beak, and a nest with three open-mouthed baby birds begging to be fed, while a seated cat waits patiently below. Other blocks contain appliquéd symbols of military service or membership in benevolent and fraternal organizations. Seven of the blocks contain tiny appliquéd United States flags as part of their patriotic designs. The majority of the blocks have floral motifs. The name "Nellie," Susan's thirteen-year-old granddaughter is embroidered under a basket of flowers. Another floral motif block has the initials "E L," probably for Emma Louise, Susan's ten-year-old granddaughter. A vase decorated with the image of a young boy, cut from printed cotton, and filled with flowers, has "Mother" embroidered underneath it.
- The focus of the album quilt, the center block, is a decorated tree. The presents or decorations include baskets of fruit and flowers, oranges, stockings, a cane, a candy cane, a ladder, parasols, an umbrella, a bottle of bitters, a fish, a bird, a mitten, a slipper, a picture of a dog in an oval frame, a cat on a mat, a pipe, a watch, a bird in a cage, and other gifts. A few are marked with names or initials. Under the fenced-in base of the tree, Susan embroidered "Merry Christmas." Susan Rogers's quilt is a charming example of the mid-nineteenth-century album quilt, each block unique and personalized.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1867
- quilter
- Rogers, Susan
- ID Number
- TE*T15474
- catalog number
- T15474
- accession number
- 293922
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Our Future President
- Description
- Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
- These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
- This hand colored print is of a baby boy seated in an ornate black and gold carriage with four large wheels, leather convertable hood and large tassel hanging from the side. The baby's gown has embroidery, and a velvet coat is draped on carriage. The carriage is depicted in a landscape setting.
- Kellogg & Bulkeley was the lithography firm formed from the partnership between Elijah Chapman Kellogg, Edmund Burke Kellogg, and William Henry Bulkeley. The firm was formed in 1867, and shortly after both Elijah Chapman Kellogg and his brother Edmund Burke Chapman retired. After their retirement the only Kellogg remaining in the business was Edmund’s son Charles Kellogg. By1871 the partnership between the Kellogg family and Bulkeley had been reorganized as an incorporated stock company. The company came to an end when is merged with Case, Lockwood, & Brainard to become Connecticut Printers in 1947. Connecticut Printers remained open until 1990 when the Kellogg lithography firm finally ended after 160 years.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1867
- maker
- Kellogg & Bulkeley
- ID Number
- DL*60.2241
- catalog number
- 60.2241
- accession number
- 228146
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center