Industry & Manufacturing

Eli Terry Mass-Produced Clock

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

Date: 1830s

Stoneware flask

Early in their partnership, Nathan Clark and Ethan S. Fox produced both earthenware and stoneware. They stopped making earthenware in the 1830s to focus on stoneware forms such as molasses jugs, beer bottles and spittoons, all considered innovative shapes.
Description
Early in their partnership, Nathan Clark and Ethan S. Fox produced both earthenware and stoneware. They stopped making earthenware in the 1830s to focus on stoneware forms such as molasses jugs, beer bottles and spittoons, all considered innovative shapes. This elaborately decorated flask may have been designed to compete with glass flasks being made at the time.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1829-1838
maker
Clark, Nathan
Fox, Ethan
ID Number
1977.0803.90
accession number
1977.0803
catalog number
1977.0803.090

Stoneware Water Cooler

This salt-glazed, ovoid stoneware cooler was made by Eleazer Orcutt and Horace Humiston in Troy, New York. It has two large handles and features a classical figure with a lyre in relief surrounded by a series of impressed medallions highlighted in cobalt blue.
Description
This salt-glazed, ovoid stoneware cooler was made by Eleazer Orcutt and Horace Humiston in Troy, New York. It has two large handles and features a classical figure with a lyre in relief surrounded by a series of impressed medallions highlighted in cobalt blue. The cooler was probably made for an individual or firm named A. Drown in Canaan, New York.
The presence of nearby stoneware clays gave rise to the New York state salt-glazed stoneware tradition that, by the early 1800s, developed in villages and towns along the Hudson River. Shipped upriver, the clay returned downstream after being transformed into useful ceramic vessels. With the Erie Canal completion in 1825, stoneware production extended its range to meet the increased flow of perishable goods from the Great Lakes region.
Stoneware clay, when fired to a temperature of about 2100 degrees F, vitrifies into highly durable ceramic material that holds liquids and keeps perishable contents cool. Stoneware potters in America, many of them immigrants from Germany and the Netherlands, maintained their European tradition of throwing coarse salt into the kiln. The salt melts in the heat and forms a pitted glassy surface on the vessels, which would otherwise be a dull grey.
The production of these sturdy salt-glazed containers declined following improvements in tinning and canning perishable foodstuffs. In the late 1850s, the glass Mason canning jar entered the market, after which the potteries lost much of the demand for food storage containers that sustained so much of their production.
date made
about 1832
maker
Orcutt, Eleazer
Humiston, Horace
ID Number
CE.300894.017
catalog number
300894.17
accession number
300894

Oil Painting or Overpainted Print, Capturing a Sperm Whale

The most dangerous part of a dangerous job was working in the actual whaleboat, first chasing and then capturing and killing the prey.This picture is a copy or an overpainted example of a famous print first issued in 1835, believed to be the first indigenous American whaling prin
Description
The most dangerous part of a dangerous job was working in the actual whaleboat, first chasing and then capturing and killing the prey.
This picture is a copy or an overpainted example of a famous print first issued in 1835, believed to be the first indigenous American whaling print. It is derived from a sketch by whaleman Cornelius Hulsart, who lost an arm on the whaler Superior and subsequently became an artist.
The original print was one of a pair produced to raise money for Hulsart, and it was dedicated to Superior's owners N. & W.W. Billings of New London, Connecticut. It is a fairly accurate portrayal of the danger in approaching and killing a wounded, enraged whale. As shown by the red, bloody whale spout, the whalers have struck the prey’s lungs or arteries, but the animal was still strong enough to break a boat in half and flip a crewman into the water.
date or original painting
1835
whaleman and artist
Hulsart, Cornelius
owner of the ship Superior
N & W. W. Billings
ID Number
DL.65.0876
catalog number
65.0876
accession number
256396

H. Holdship & Son Paper Manufacturers

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1832-06-08
June 8th, 1832
graphic artist; publisher
H. Holdship & Son
graphic artist; engraver
Savory
ID Number
2013.0065.02
accession number
2013.0065
catalog number
2013.0065.02

H. Holdship & Son Paper Manufacturers

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1832-05-03
May 3rd, 1832
graphic artist; publisher
H. Holdship & Son
graphic artist; engraver
Savory
ID Number
2013.0065.01
accession number
2013.0065
catalog number
2013.0065.01

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