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 520 items.
Page 6 of 52
1900 - 1950 Amish "Path Through the Woods" Quilt
- Description
- Quilted in Topeka, Indiana, in the first half of the twentieth century, this is an example of the pattern referred to as “Path through the Woods.” Made of cottons, mainly solid colored tan and red, the blocks are framed by a 2¼-inch red inner border and a 6½-inch tan outer border. The quilt has a blue binding. It is both hand- and machine-pieced; the blocks are joined with machine stitching. An 8-pointed star is quilted in the center of each block. This is an instance of Amish quilting done outside of traditional Pennsylvania areas.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900-1950
- quilter
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1985.0029.03
- catalog number
- 1985.0029.03
- accession number
- 1985.0029
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1900 - 1925 Amish "Bars" Quilt
- Description
- Quilted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the early part of the twentieth century, this seemingly simple pattern of bars set in a contrasting color typifies Amish quilting. The center is composed of eleven burgundy and blue strips of wool-and-cotton fabric, which vary in width from 6 inches to 7-inches, set in a frame of blue. The corners of the border are mitered. The blue bars and borders are quilted in a cable pattern, and the burgundy bars in a chevron pattern. The skillful quilting is done with rose and blue cotton thread. It is a classic rendering of a traditional Amish pattern.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900-1925
- quilter
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1985.0029.04
- catalog number
- 1985.0029.04
- accession number
- 1985.0029
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1900 - 1925 Amish "Hanging Diamond" Quilt
- Description
- Quilted in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the early twentieth century, this is a beautiful example of Amish quilting utilizing a traditional pattern. The dark red 25½-inch center diamond with a 3¾-inch purple border is set diagonally into a 46¼-inch square also with a 3¾-inch border. Framed by an outer 11¾-inch border, the quilt is finished with a wide contrasting binding of dark blue. The fabrics are mainly wool, wool-and-cotton, and some rayon. An 8-pointed star, feathered circles, vines, and scallops are motifs quilted with black cotton to complete this quilt.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900-1925
- quilter
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1985.0029.05
- catalog number
- 1985.0029.05
- accession number
- 1985.0029
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1900 - 1925 Amish "Crazy-patch Block" Quilt
- Description
- The maker of this Amish quilt, probably from Pennsylvania, effectively utilizes sixteen 8½-inch crazy-patched and embroidered blocks set diagonally to create this dramatic example. The crazy-patched blocks are contrasted with blue and framed within a 4½-inch light rose border with lavender corner squares and a 10-inch darker rose border. Pieces in the crazy-patch blocks are outlined with polychrome silk embroidery in herringbone, feather, buttonhole, thorn, cross, and double-cross stitches. The fabrics are wool and wool-and-cotton. The initials “AK” are embroidered on a corner of the lining. The controlled use of the crazy-patch aesthetic in this quilt gives it an ordered, focused appearance.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- First quarter 20th century
- date made
- 1900-1925
- quilter
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1985.0029.06
- catalog number
- 1985.0029.06
- accession number
- 1985.0029
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mousetrap
- Description
- This canning jar with a funnel-shaped, one-way entrance cap used metal prongs to prevent mice from escaping. Since the U.S. Patent Office was formally established in 1838, it has granted more than forty-four hundred mousetrap patents, more than any other device. John Mast heeded Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice to, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” and in 1899 built the more familiar snap trap, which received its patent in 1903. Simple and effective, Mast’s trap is the best-selling mousetrap of all time. However, inventors are still attempting to improve upon Mast’s design--the Patent Office grants about 40 patents for mousetraps a year, and it receives almost ten times as many patent requests!
- The simple mousetrap is a testament to American ingenuity. Inventors and innovators have sought to deal with the mice in different ways–some traps are “beheaders,” some “imprisoners,” and some are “mashers.” No matter the design, the mousetrap has an undeniable grasp on the American imagination, with board games, gambling apparatus, and even movies being based on this pervasive mammal and the attempts to capture it.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- early 20th century
- referenced
- Mason, John Landis
- ID Number
- 1985.0847.01
- accession number
- 1985.0847
- catalog number
- 1985.847.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Carpet Beater
- Description
- Housework has always been physically demanding and time consuming labor. In the 19th century coal and wood burning stoves constantly soiled walls, drapes, and carpets, so that rug beating, along with window and floor washing, would have been a necessary chore. Usually made of wood, rattan, cane, wicker, spring steel or coiled wire, rug beaters were commonly used to beat dust and dirt out of rugs. A rug beater's flexibility depended on the number of woven switches it had in its paddle, a two-switch beater being more flexible than a three- or four-switch one. This nineteenth-century rug beater consists of three rattan switches, bent into a five-loop paddle and wrapped around an iron wire rod handle. Introduced in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, carpet sweepers and vacuum cleaners allowed for higher standards of cleanliness and more frequent cleaning, but lifting heavy vacuums was strenuous work.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 19th century
- ID Number
- 1987.0794.1
- catalog number
- 1987.794.1
- accession number
- 1987.0794
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Vacuum
- Description
- Although the vacuum cleaner had been invented in the early 20th century, the mass production and sales of vacuum cleaners did not take off until the economic boom that followed the decade after the First World War (1914-1918). This Hoover vacuum model 700 was produced between 1926 and 1929 and was the first of its kind to feature an aluminum body, an on/off switch, and the agitator brushroll—an innovation that used metal beater strips to vibrate pieces of dirt from carpets. The vacuum was one of the many supposedly labor saving devices marketed in the 1920s that promised to liberate middle-class women, now managing their houses without live-in maids, from the drudgery of housework. Accordingly advertisements for the Hoover 700 depicted a chic flapper of the late 1920s using the vacuum. Although the vacuum did clean more thoroughly than the broom and dustpan, the popularization of such appliances created more exacting standards of cleanliness thus making the hope of simplified housework largely illusory.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1927
- maker
- Hoover Company
- ID Number
- 1990.3134.01
- catalog number
- 1990.3134.01
- nonaccession number
- 1990.3134
- catalog number
- 1990.3134.1 A,B
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Toaster
- Description
- The quest for the perfect slice of toast led to many innovations in toaster engineering and design. A September 1930 Ladies’ Home Journal advertisement proclaimed this Hotpoint single-slice electric toaster produced “Golden brown slices of scientifically caramelized goodness” as well as being “the most beautifully designed toaster in over twenty-six years of electric appliance leadership.” Hotpoint was a British appliance company founded in 1911. In the 1920s, through a joint venture with General Electric, the two companies began to make electric toasters for homes in both England and the United States.
- Electric toasters, which did not gain real popularity until the late 1920s, were often a symbol of modernism. The toaster’s “Art Deco” styling was a combination of many different art movements of the time. It used geometric shapes and unusual, modern materials to create a new, “modern” aesthetic that became increasingly popular until the great depression.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1930s
- maker
- Hotpoint Edison General Electric Appliance Company, Inc.
- ID Number
- 1992.0338.16
- catalog number
- 1992.0338.16
- accession number
- 1992.0338
- catalog number
- 1992.338.16
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
All Wool Coverlet
- Description
- According to the donor of this coverlet, it first belonged to Mrs. Ferdinand O’Neal, who lived just outside Zanesville, Ohio. Her maiden name is believed to have been Wheeler, and in about 1863 she married Mr. O’Neal and moved to a home outside of Zanesville, known as “Greenwood.” Mrs. O’Neal passed the coverlet on to her daughter Marcella O’Neal, who passed it on to Martha Margaret O’Neal. The coverlet is made entirely of wool, and was probably woven (in two sections) between 1840 and 1860. The pattern is similar to the one known as “Cup and Saucer.” The weaver is unknown.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1840-1860
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1993.0225.001
- accession number
- 1993.0225
- catalog number
- 1993.0225.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1934 Ada Chitwood Jones's "Sock Top" Quilt
- Description
- This twentieth-century-quilt, made in 1934 by Ada Jones of Fyffe, Alabama is unique in many ways. The top is pieced of machine-knitted sock tops that were made as separate items to be sewn onto women’s socks. The designs in the sock tops are composed of dots, squares, diamonds, and other shapes.
- W. B. Davis, the oldest hosiery factory in Fort Payne, Alabama, made sock tops and sold them by the pound. The factory survived the Depression and tried to make Fort Payne the sock capital of the world. Ada’s sister-in-law, Ruby Mae Jacoway Chitwood, worked at the factory and acquired the tops after they were no longer needed in the mill’s showroom. Ada assembled and then hand-stitched the sock tops into strips to create a delightfully designed top for her quilt.
- The lining of the quilt is printed cotton from fabrics distributed by the Agricultural Extension Office, Auburn, Alabama, in a New Deal self-help program to aid farm women. The filling is ginned cotton from cotton grown on the family farm. In 1963, one of the donors, Jimmie Sibert Jones, added a printed cotton border to protect the quilt's fraying edges. This fabric was from unused fertilizer sacks that were given to her by the E. Brooks Gin and Fertilizer Company of Fyffe, Alabama. On a fabric label stitched to the lining is printed in ink, “MADE BY / ADA CHITWOOD JONES / DONATED BY / JIMMIE SIBERT JONES.”
- In 1994 when the quilt was given to the Smithsonian, the donor wrote: “The quilt was made in 1934 under the New Deal a government organized form of self help. . . . the government issued surplus cotton fabric to be used in the homes for bed linen and other items. . . . top part is made from ladies sock tops of new material with stylish colors and designs of the thirties. . . . in this era the tops were knitted and then sewn to the sock . . . . My mother-in-law, who is now ninety years of age, received two pieces of the fabric and made two quilts. She gave the quilts to me when I married in 1945. The other quilt is now in the State of Alabama Department of Archives and History.” Ada Chitwood Jones, born in 1903, died in 1997 a few years after the donation. She is buried in Mountain View Memory Gardens, DeKalb, Alabama.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1934
- maker
- Jones, Ada Chitwood
- ID Number
- 1994.0169.01
- accession number
- 1994.0169
- catalog number
- 1994.0169.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center