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 82 items.
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Juvet Time Globe
- Description
- In 1880 Scientific American, enthusiastically recommended Louis P. Juvet's time globe to its readers. It was, the magazine found, "a fit ornament for any library, a valuable adjunct in every business office, and a necessity in every institution of learning." The clockwork-driven globe was undeniably useful for studying geography, determining world time, and illustrating the rotation of the earth. The basis of its appeal, however, was even broader. Prominently displayed in the parlors and drawing rooms of Gilded Age America, the elegant time globe clearly demonstrated the wealth and culture of its owner.
- Available in a range of sizes and versions simple and ornate, the time globe consisted of three basic elements: a globe, a mechanism for rotating it, and a base. The globe most often featured a terrestrial map, but celestial globes were also offered. An equatorial ring indicated worldwide time and zones of daylight and darkness. A meridian ring supported a clock dial over the north pole.
- Concealed within the globe was a four-day, spring-driven brass movement that drove the clock dial and rotated the globe once every twenty-four hours. Manufactured for Juvet by Rood and Horton of Bristol, Connecticut, the movements featured a lever escapement and a balance wheel. Turning the feather end of the arrow-shaped axis wound the movement.
- Precisely when production of the globes began is uncertain. Juvet, a Swiss immigrant and a resident of Glens Falls, New York, first patented a mechanical globe in January 1867, and exhibited one at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. Probably sometime in 1879, Juvet formed a partnership with James Arkell. By the early 1880s, Juvet and Company of Canajoharie, New York, was making more than sixty varieties of globes. In October 1886, fire consumed the factory where the globes were assembled, ending their manufacture there forever.
- Pictured on the right. Overall measurements are 51 x 17 x 15 in..
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1880
- manufacturer
- Juvet & Co.
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.076
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.076
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Tiffany Floor Lamp
- Description
- This lamp, from about 1900, is a compelling example of Louis Comfort Tiffany's ability to transform a design aesthetic inspired by nature into a fabulous decorative furnishing. The bamboo design is carried throughout the lamp. The dome-shaped 24" shade is constructed of green fibrillated glass with yellow mottling to create long tapering bamboo leaves and shoots against an opalescent geometric panel ground. The bamboo stalks appear to be growing against a wire trellis. The 62" integrated brown patinated bronze sectioned bamboo stem base is topped with a matching bamboo-inspired heat cap with a seedpod finial.
- The lamp was a bequest from the estate of Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, a generous Washington philanthropist. Following in the family tradition of supporting charitable, cultural, and preservation organizations, Mrs. Patterson was the source of numerous gifts and donations to the Smithsonian Institution and its museums and libraries. She was the daughter of Isabella Goodrich and attorney John Cabell Breckinridge. Her maternal grandfather was inventor and industrialist B. F. Goodrich. Her paternal great-grandfather was John C. Breckinridge, vice president of the United States and a military figure. She began her career as a freelance photojournalist and filmmaker. One of her first film subjects was the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky. During World War II, she was hired by Edward R. Murrow as a staff broadcaster for CBS in Berlin. Her photographs were published in National Geographic, Life and Harper's Bazaar. In 1940 she married American diplomat Jefferson Patterson and took on the role of diplomatic wife.
- Date made
- ca 1889-1920
- user
- Patterson, Mary Marvin Breckinridge
- manufacturer
- Tiffany Studios
- ID Number
- 2003.0276.01
- catalog number
- 2003.0276.01
- accession number
- 2003.0276
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Cut Glass Bowl
- Description
- From its founding in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was assumed to be the keeper of the national collections, although the "United States National Museum" did not emerge as a formal entity until 1858. Natural history and anthropology artifacts were the focus of the Museum's earliest collecting efforts, but by the late 19th century the Museum was collecting household goods, manufactured for the American and European market, that demonstrated technological and artistic advances in a wide range of industries. Between 1885 and 1920, American glass companies played an important role in building the new collections by donating examples of their currently fashionable glassware.
- T. G. Hawkes & Company of Corning, New York, donated examples of their work to the Museum in 1917 and 1918, showcasing their rich or brilliant-cut glass. This bowl, donated by the firm in 1917, is cut and engraved, but also mounted in sterling silver—a newly fashionable style at the time.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1917
- maker
- T. G. Hawkes & Co.
- ID Number
- CE*59.147a
- catalog number
- 59.147a
- accession number
- 61165
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Juvet Time Globe
- Description
- In 1880, Scientific American enthusiastically recommended Louis P. Juvet's time globe to its readers. It was, the magazine found, "a fit ornament for any library, a valuable adjunct in every business office, and a necessity in every institution of learning." The clockwork-driven globe was undeniably useful for studying geography, determining world time, and illustrating the rotation of the earth. The basis of its appeal, however, was even broader. Prominently displayed in the parlors and drawing rooms of Gilded Age America, the elegant time globe clearly demonstrated the wealth and culture of its owner.
- Available in a range of sizes and versions simple and ornate, the time globe consisted of three basic elements: a globe, a mechanism for rotating it, and a base. The globe most often featured a terrestrial map, but celestial globes were also offered. An equatorial ring indicated worldwide time and zones of daylight and darkness. A meridian ring supported a clock dial over the north pole.
- Concealed within the globe was a four-day, spring-driven brass movement that drove the clock dial and rotated the globe once every twenty-four hours. Manufactured for Juvet by Rood and Horton of Bristol, Connecticut, the movements featured a lever escapement and a balance wheel. Turning the feather end of the arrow-shaped axis wound the movement.
- Precisely when production of the globes began is uncertain. Juvet, a Swiss immigrant and a resident of Glens Falls, New York, first patented a mechanical globe in January 1867, and exhibited one at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. Probably sometime in 1879, Juvet formed a partnership with James Arkell. By the early 1880s, Juvet and Company of Canajoharie, New York, was making more than sixty varieties of globes. In October 1886, fire consumed the factory where the globes were assembled, ending their manufacture there forever.
- Pictured on the left. Overall measurements are 55 1/2 x 17 x 17 inches.
- Date made
- ca 1885
- manufacturer
- Juvet & Co.
- ID Number
- ME*308472
- catalog number
- 308472
- accession number
- 93248
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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
Linen Overshot Coverlet 1790
- Description
- Elizabeth Deuel is said to have made this single-woven, all linen coverlet in1790, in the Saratoga region of New York State. Her name and the date are cross-stitched into the lower edge of the coverlet just above the fringe. A search of the 1790 census of the area produced no one with the surname Deuel. More research is needed to determine where Miss Deuel lived, and if she was the weaver or the owner of this coverlet. In the 18th century, it was common for household textiles to be marked with the initials or name of the owner and the date. The average colonial home did not have a great number of household textiles, and they were considered important possessions. This coverlet was woven in two sections that were then sewn together.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- late 18th century
- 1790
- weaver or owner
- Deuel, Elizabeth
- maker or owner of coverlet
- Deuel, Elizabeth
- ID Number
- 1981.0274.005
- accession number
- 1981.0274
- catalog number
- 1981.0274.05
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Pitcher Honoring Frederick Douglass
- Description
- This hand-modeled and molded, unglazed red earthenware pitcher honors Frederick Douglass, "Slave Orator/ United States Marshall, Recorder of Deeds D.C./ Diplomat."
- Although the maker is unknown, we do know that the design for the pitcher was copyrighted by a J. E. Bruce of Albany, New York, in 1896, one year after Douglass's death.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1895
- designer
- Bruce, J. E.
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1981.0353.1
- catalog number
- 1981.353.1
- accession number
- 1981.0353
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1830 Jane Valentine's "Irish Chain" Quilt
- Description
- On the front of this “Irish Chain”-patterned quilt is found an inscription in ink: “Commenced in 1825 & Finished in 1830 by Mifs Jane Valentine Scipio Cayuga Co. N.Y. No. of Pieced Blocks 168 Small Blocks 4,2,42." Another inscription in a different hand and ink on a back corner states: “My Mothers 5040 Blocks 1832 In Case of My death to be given to My Sister Hattie Blodgett.”
- The quilt is made of 3-inch plain and pieced blocks. The blocks are comprised of about 130 different roller-printed cottons with small print motifs. An examination of the quilt reveals that there are 348 white blocks and 348 pieced blocks; the segments of the pieced blocks are 5/8-inch square, and there are 10,092 of them. Diagonal grid quilting follows the “chain.” The plain white blocks are quilted, 6 stitches per inch, with a floral motif. The “Irish Chain” pattern was in use in the early 1800s and may have been adapted from weaving patterns.
- Margaret Jane Valentine was the daughter of Peter Valentine (1784-1865) and Elizabeth Hilliker. Jane married Benjamin Brown Jr. on November 16, 1831. Harriet Brown was born in 1848 and married Charles Blodgett. It was Mrs. Harriet E. Blodgett who in 1915 donated this quilt and a coverlet. At the time she wrote that the quilt was “. . . pieced by my mother. Commenced in 1825 when she was about fourteen finished 1830. . . I feel a great desire to put them [both quilt and coverlet] where they will be preserved.”
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1830
- maker
- Valentine, Jane
- ID Number
- TE*E287383
- accession number
- 58478
- catalog number
- E287383
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Jacob Impson Coverlet
- Description
- The weaver of this Jacquard double-woven cotton and wool coverlet, Jacob Impson (1802—1869), worked first in Ludlowville, New York, and then in Cortland Village, New York. His name, the name of the owner (Lois Burnham) and the date 1834 appear in both of the lower corners of this coverlet. The words “Lady’s Fancy” (which may be the name of the design) appear across the upper edge of the border, and the words, “Cortland Village” appear across the lower area of the border, just above the finished edge. This coverlet was made at the height of the “Fancy” period (1790—1840) in the decorative arts. During the “Fancy” period, items were covered with bright designs with lots of movement rather than the classical motifs used in other periods. This coverlet was woven in two pieces and sewn together.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1834
- owner
- Burnham, Lois
- weaver
- Impson, Jacob
- ID Number
- TE*T008113
- catalog number
- T08113.000
- accession number
- 144578
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Snowballs and Pine Tree Coverlet
- Description
- This blue and white cotton and wool coverlet features a variation of the Snowball pattern in the center, and a variation of the Pine Tree pattern along its borders. It is double-woven and believed to have been made in New York State in the first half of the 19th century. It was passed down through the family of the original owner to the donor, before being given to the Museum. The name of the weaver is unknown. Its condition is testimony to many years of use. Coverlets are damaged by sunlight, insects, and abrasion brought on by everyday use. They are frequently worn away at the top edge, by the owner pulling them up at night to stay warm.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1800-1830
- early 19th century
- 1827
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- TE*T009571
- catalog number
- T09571.000
- accession number
- 172485
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center