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 6 items.
A Wagon-Spring Clock
- Description
- From its invention in the fifteenth century, the coiled steel spring became the preferred power source of European clockmakers. The spring permitted clocks to be small and portable, so most small European clocks and watches employed it. But the steel spring was an expensive import to America. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, and the introduction of the Bessemer process for mass-producing steel however, coiled steel springs were not produced in the United States. American clockmakers circumvented this limitation with ingenious weight-driven shelf clocks that were accurate, reliable, and compact. These they mass-produced and offered to ever-widening markets.
- Joseph Ives, a Bristol clockmaker notable for his inventiveness but lack of business success, had first introduced wagon-spring clocks in the 1820s. They had conventional weight-driven brass movements, except for one feature: The strings that ordinarily would have held the weights were connected, through intermediary pulleys, to the free ends of what looked like a wagon-spring on the bottom of the case. This mechanism exerted a downward pull like the two weights.
- When American clockmakers began to compete abroad with European clockmakers in the 1830s and 1840s, they were reminded of the advantages of spring-driven clocks. They vigorously explored various schemes for producing spring-driven clock movements without relying on imported steel springs. When one manufacturer in Bristol, Connecticut—Brewster and Ingraham—had considerable success with coiled springs made of brass, a local competitor, Birge and Fuller, resurrected Ives's "wagon-spring" design.
- Birge and Fuller manufactured wagon-spring clocks from 1844 until 1847, when locally produced coiled-steel springs finally became available.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1845
- maker
- Birge & Fuller
- ID Number
- ME*315876
- catalog number
- 315876
- accession number
- 225120
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Novelty Clock, "Winker," about 1865
- Description
- Once Yankee technology had perfected the process for mass-producing spring-driven brass clock movements, the small mechanisms could be made and sold so cheaply that virtually everyone could afford a domestic clock. Case styles proliferated as the industry rushed to satisfy the broad range of American tastes. Decorative novelties flooded the market. Fanciful figures with blinking eyes were among the many popular styles.
- The "winkers," painted cast-iron figures with clock movements in their bellies, enjoyed great favor in the 1860s and 1870s. Made by several firms in nearly a dozen styles, they featured eyes that moved up and down through a wire linkage to the escapement. The first figures are credited to Pietro Cinquinni of Meriden, Connecticut. In 1857 he patented two figure-clock case designs: a man dressed in eighteenth century garb, who came to be called Toby or the Continental, and Santa Claus. Production began the same year at the Meriden firm of Bradley and Hubbard, manufacturers of cast-metal household ornaments. Movements were supplied by the Seth Thomas Clock Company and the Waterbury Clock Company. Figure-clock castings by J. Buchner and Company of New York and movements attributed to Chauncey Jerome also survive. The line soon expanded to include the Organ Grinder, Gambrinus, Topsy, Sambo, the Sitting Dog, the Reclining Dog, the Owl, and the Lion. The Smithsonian's Toby has an unmarked spring-driven movement with a balance wheel, the so-called "marine lever" movement.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1865
- maker
- Bradley & Hubbard
- ID Number
- ME*317038
- catalog number
- 317038
- accession number
- 233061
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
A Massachusetts Shelf Clock, Aaron Willard, about 1820
- Description
- Certain factors peculiar to the American colonies guided the inventive activities of colonial clockmakers. Brass, the customary material for clock movements, was expensive. The market for large, complex, and costly clocks was small; people wanted inexpensive, reliable timekeepers. American clockmakers responded by substituting wood for brass, designing radically new case styles, and introducing mass production.
- The shelf clock, a distinctly American design, fitted conditions in the colonies perfectly. The Massachusetts shelf clock, or half clock, was developed in the 1770s, with the Boston area's Willard brothers playing leading roles. Massachusetts clockmakers continued to produce it for about half a century thereafter. It was in essence a tall case clock with the trunk left out, consisting only of a hood and base about three feet tall. Its brass movement resembled the traditional tall case movement, only simplified and much reduced in size.
- The specimen shown is marked "Aaron Willard/Boston." Like his older brothers Benjamin and Simon, Aaron Willard (1757-1844) moved from the family homestead in Grafton, Massachusetts, to Boston around 1780, where he became a prolific and prosperous clockmaker. He retired in 1823 and turned his business over to his son Aaron, Jr. The clock is of a design that Aaron produced late in his career and apparently in considerable numbers. The clock is an eight-day "timepiece," that is, a timekeeper without the means to strike the hours. Instead it has an alarm mechanism that creates a rousing noise by rapping the inside of the wooden case.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1820
- maker
- Willard, Aaron
- ID Number
- ME*318993
- catalog number
- 318993
- accession number
- 236079
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Peter Hill Tall Case Clock
- Description
- Peter Hill (1767-1820) is one of the few African American professional clockmakers known to have worked in antebellum America. A freed slave, he had a shop first in Burlington Township and then in Mount Holly, New Jersey--two small, predominantly Quaker communities near Philadelphia.
- Undoubtedly the Quaker commitment to educating and freeing slaves benefited Hill. While still a slave, he served a traditional apprenticeship with his master, Joseph Hollingshead, Jr., a clockmaker whose brother John and father Joseph, Sr., practiced the trade as well. Hill gained his freedom in 1795. He married, set up a workshop of his own, and purchased land in Burlington. He also may have continued to work for either or both of the Hollingshead brothers for a time. Hill never became rich, but his status as a skilled freedman in a Quaker community permitted him to live comfortably and work independently.
- Only a few clocks by Hill are known to survive. The movement of the Smithsonian example, which dates from about 1800, closely resembles English clocks of the period. The painted dial, marked "No. 30/ Peter Hill/ Burlington," is an English import. The clock's walnut case is attributed to the cabinetmaker George Deacon, whose shop was only a few doors from Hill's own home and workshop in Burlington.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1800
- maker
- Hill, Peter
- ID Number
- ME*335538
- catalog number
- 335538
- accession number
- 323462
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Jerome Brothers Ogee Clock
- Description
- The depression of 1837 hit Connecticut wooden clock manufacturers so hard that they feared the entire industry might collapse. On a trip to Virginia to collect old bills, Chauncey Jerome—a successful clock producer from Bristol, Connecticut—had a new idea. A simple one-day clock made of brass, he thought, could be produced far more cheaply and in much greater quantities than the standard wooden clock. When he returned home, he described the idea to his brother Noble, a talented clockmaker who quickly made a prototype and received a U.S. patent on it in 1839.
- A typical factory might produce several thousand wooden clocks per year, but the Jeromes—and their principal imitators and rivals—were soon mass-producing brass clocks in the hundreds of thousands. For these brass clocks, Chauncey Jerome adopted a simple case introduced by several other New England clockmakers. The case became famous as the "Ogee," named for its characteristic S-shaped moldings.
- Unlike wooden clocks, brass movements were unaffected by humidity and could be transported by ship. The entire world, clockmakers quickly recognized, was a potential market. The reception Chauncey Jerome's clocks received in England, home of some of the world's finest clockmakers, illustrates the impact of his innovation. When the first clocks arrived in 1842, valued at an improbable $1.50 each, English customs inspectors assumed that Jerome had set the figure far below cost to avoid paying the proper duties. To teach Jerome a lesson, the inspectors bought the whole shipment at the declared price. When a similar cargo at the same valuation arrived a few days later, they did the same. Only with the third shipment did they recognize that they were unwittingly becoming distributors for Yankee clock manufacturers. Jerome was content with the prices British customs agents had been paying him and would have happily supplied them indefinitely. From then on Jerome's clocks entered the English market unimpeded.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1840
- maker
- Jerome, Chauncey
- ID Number
- ME*318998
- catalog number
- 318998
- accession number
- 236076
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Clock
- Description (Brief)
- An alarm clock in an ivory-grain celluloid case. The case is decorated with a floral motif and blue rhinestones. The clock was made in the United States.
- date made
- ca 1920
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.1705
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.1705
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center