This patent model demonstrates an invention for various improvements on the English presses of Applegath, Napier, and others, especially methods of stopping and reversing the press bed in its travel and of raising the impression cylinders to allow the bed to pass underneath. The invention was granted patent number 2629.
This was the patent for Hoe's Pony press, built specifically for the New York Sun to print 5-6,000 impressions per hour. Richard March Hoe (1812-1886) was the son of Robert Hoe, founder of the original company, which he took over in 1833 after his father's death. Among many outstanding inventions, his most famous press was the Lightning of 1846. He was also known for solicitous management of his employees, for whom he set up set up a free but compulsory apprentice school.
Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
About Grueby Pottery: William Grueby (1867-1925), a member of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, began producing bricks, tiles, and architectural terra cotta in 1890 and founded his Grueby Faience Company in 1894 in Revere, Massachusetts. The firm expanded into art pottery in 1897 and was quickly successful, winning exhibition medals at World’s Fairs in Paris and St. Petersburg and the Grand Prize in St. Louis in 1904. A subdued, matte green glaze became the hallmark of the company’s art pottery line and an iconic example of Arts and Crafts design. Grueby work was also distinguished by its forms—inspired by the French Art Nouveau potter, Auguste Delaherche, and the company marketed over a hundred items, from “small cabinet bits to great jars over three feet high” (Kovel and Kovel 1993:60). Hand thrown on the wheel, Grueby pottery was noted for an extensive range of novel matte glazes developed by William Grueby himself. Decoration was applied under the supervision of the designers by young women trained in local Boston art schools. Commonly, plant motifs were applied in a clay relief, in highly stylized designs. Paris dealer Samuel Bing promoted Grueby’s pottery as part of European Art Nouveau, and Grueby pottery was used for Tiffany lamp bases in the United States. Grueby Pottery also gained popularity through being displayed and sold with Gustav Stickley’s Arts and Crafts furniture. Grueby art pottery ended in 1911, though architectural tile production continued in a related firm for several more years. Grueby’s work was very influential but was ultimately unable to compete with firms that mass-produced similar styles at lower cost.
(Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
About the Object:
Thickly walled earthenware bowl in a truncated spherical form. Wheel-thrown and worked with heavily stylized plant leaves. Best known for their signature green glaze, this bowl is blue.
Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
About Paul Revere Pottery and the Saturday Evening Girls Club:
The non-profit Paul Revere Pottery began as part of the settlement house movement in Boston, and the name reflected the original pottery location near the historic Old North Church. The Saturday Evening Girls club, sponsored by Mrs. James J. Storrow, offered reading, social activities, and crafts to Jewish and Italian immigrant girls. Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown were inspired by a pottery in Switzerland and studied painting and glazing in order to bring the skills to the girls at the Club. A kiln was purchased in 1906, and in 1908, Edith Brown as director and designer led commercial production. Over the four decades of the enterprise, over two hundred young women were employed. The girls worked with a potter, a designer, and a kiln operator and enjoyed an eight-hour day and two weeks’ paid vacation, unusual working conditions for the time (Kovel and Kovel 1993:139). Successful sales led to an expanded facility in 1915 in Brighton, Massachusetts, where fourteen to twenty girls were regularly employed. Paul Revere Pottery specialized in vases, lamps, and tiles, and their most popular items were dining ware for children with brightly-hued designs of flowers, rabbits, and ducklings. An emphasis on functional tableware was unusual in art potteries at that time. Glazes were both matte and glossy, on hand-thrown ware, and designs were usually outlined in black. Decorators often preferred single decorative bands on their forms, coating the rest of the object in a distinct, sand-textured glaze. The black-outlined patterns and vibrant colors make Paul Revere Pottery wares some of the most iconic American ceramics from the turn of the century. The pottery always required subsidy because the wares could not be sold for the cost of production (Evans 1987:215). Philanthropic gifts and funds from concerts and theater performances helped the pottery stay solvent. It closed during World War II, in 1942.
(Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.; Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
About the Object:
Tall vase with a wider mouth than foot, glossy glaze. Blue body with lotus flower motif at mouth in beige and white.
Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
About Rookwood Pottery:
Rookwood is one of the most famous of the late nineteenth century art potteries, and it is the most extensively represented in the Smithsonian collection. Maria Longworth Nichols, its founder, began work as a china painter in 1873 and was part of the China Decorating Group in Cincinnati (see About Mary Louise McLaughlin). Inspired by French and Japanese pottery displayed in the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, she began to learn ceramic techniques, and in 1880, her father offered her “an old schoolhouse” that became her working pottery. Her family continued financial support until her father’s death in 1883, when William Watts Taylor joined Rookwood Pottery as an administrator and partner, bringing a new business-oriented approach. Taylor expanded production and hired men decorators for the first time, though the majority of artists employed over the years were women. In 1884, artist Laura Frye innovated the application of underglaze slips using an atomizer, which allowed the subtle gradations of color that became a signature of Rookwood pottery and was adopted elsewhere. In 1889, Rookwood was awarded a Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition, “placing the enterprise at the forefront of the world’s potteries” (Evans 1987:257). In 1890, Maria Nichols, now married to Bellamy Storer, withdrew from the firm, leaving Taylor as director. The firm continued to grow, developed rich matte and bright glazes, and emphasized plant and floral designs. The company employed a Japanese artist, Kataro Shiryamadani, who produced many designs reflecting a Japanese aesthetic. Later subjects included portraits of native Americans and historical figures. The firm also introduced pottery with electro-deposited silver overlay designs.
Rookwood developed a matte glaze around 1900 to compete with the forest-green hues of the popular Grueby Faience Company. Unlike Grueby’s glaze, which appeared waxy and leafy, Rookwood’s interpretation often used pastel tones with a vellum-like finish. Rookwood’s earlier Standard Glaze (a deep mahogany brown color graduating into yellow) transitioned into a number of popular blue, green, and lavender glazes, following consumer trends. Rookwood’s prize-winning vellum glaze brought international recognition. Architectural tile production began in 1901, and examples can be seen in the New York subway stations. After 1915, production shifted to more mass-produced ware, “rich, heavy, and simple in color,” which allowed the pottery to survive through two World Wars and the Great Depression (Evans 1987:257). An astonishing “forty thousand glaze formulas were listed at the factory and more than five hundred glazes were in daily use” (Kovel and Kovel 1993:189). In 1956, the firm was moved to Mississippi and finally closed in 1967.
(Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.; Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
About the Object:
Slender ovoid vase with a wide, long neck and slightly flaring lip. Decorated with motif of an owl perched in an evergreen tree with the sliver of a moon in the background. Sage green crackle glaze, greenish clay.
Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, or Tiffany Studios
ID Number
CE.96419
catalog number
96419
accession number
30951
maker number
4173
Description (Brief)
Favrile Glass. The body is of green bottle glass. Form: A short ovoid body with the pointed end up, no neck, but a large opening. Decorated with fish in colors and water lines, scroll work, etc. cut by the lapidary's wheel; the outlines of the fish, their scales and fins are also cut. Clear green Tiffany glass vase with impressed fish and swirls of water. The four large fishes also have red and yellow opaque glass color applied to them. There are small natural bubbles in the glass. There are paper labels on the bottom: Round paper label "'Tiffany-Favrille' Glass-Registered Trade Mark" and has the Tiffany symbol; oval red and white paper label with red edges "7500;" Rectangular paper label "B 4173;" Rectangular paper label "96.419," "Acc. 30451," "Favrile Glass Cut," and "Mr. Chas Tiffany, New York." Gift of Charles Tiffany, value $75.00.
This large, nickel-plated, manually operated cash register is an NCR Model 79. It has three columns of keys for entering numbers, and a fourth column of function keys. The operating crank is on the right side, the cash drawer is below, and a receipt dispenser on the left side. Pop-up indicators above the keys indicate the total purchase. The Model 79 was introduced by NCR in 1892, this example dates from 1894. Principles introduced with this cash register would prove important on numerous later NCR cash registers. For a model of part of the mechanism of this machine, see MA.316703.
Reference:
Richard R. Crandall and Sam Robins, The Incorruptible Cashier, vol. 2, Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press (1990), pp. 157–169.
This watch, made about 1880, featured a radical new design from the gifted watchmaker D. Azro A. Buck. Buck had filed for a patent (US204000) for his design in the fall of 1877. With the new kind of watch, Buck and his backers aimed to lower production costs and, consequently, the final sale price while still maintaining a reasonable accuracy. With fewer than 60 parts, half as many as conventional watches, the Long Wind took its name from its nine-foot-long mainspring and the effort to keep it wound. In addition to these novelties, the watch’s movement rotated in the case once in twenty-four hours.
The Long Wind was the first product of the Waterbury Watch Co., a new corporation founded about 1880 by Connecticut brass manufacturers Benedict and Burnham. It sold for about $3.50, in contrast to the cheapest American-made watches at that time that would sell, cased, for between $8 and $20. At first the company had great success, but interest dropped considerably when middlemen devised a scheme to give away the Long Wind with the purchase of a suit of clothes. The firm tried to revive sales with new watch designs, a lively advertising campaign and in 1898 a new name--the New England Watch Company. The pioneering enterprise failed in 1912, but other firms would take up the manufacture of cheap reliable watches, which came to be known as “dollar” watches.
Dial: printed paper chapter ring with Roman numerals, skeletonized center with view into movement, blued steel hour and minute hand; marked: “PATENTED/MAY 21, 1878”
Case: open face, nickel-plated metal, snap-on back missing; pierced dust cap marked:
“WATERBURY WATCH/PATENTED/IN THE UNITED STATES,/GREAT BRITAIN,/CANADA, FRANCE,/GERMANY, AUSTRIA,/RUSSIA, SPAIN,/SWEDEN, DENMARK,/BELGIUM/BENEDICT 7 BURNHAM MFG’ Co./MANUFACTURERS/WATERBURY CONN. U.S.A.”
References:
Edwin Battison, “The Auburndale Watch Company: First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch,” Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, United States National Museum Bulletin 218 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1959).
Harry Chase Brearley, Time Telling Through the Ages (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919).
William Dunn, “The Waterbury Rotary Watch,” National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Bulletin, October 2010, 542-553.
William J. Pape, History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley, Connecticut (Chicago, New York: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1918).
Model 431, 80W, 110-120V (AC only), 3-speed hand mixer and cutlery sharpener. Streamlined, bright yellow plastic motor body with matching bracket handle and horizontal, rocket-like, rear wings atop a polished chrome base with light brown, welded rubber cushion housing two, detachable, 4-blade, open rectangular beaters; smooth chrome cover conceals a small grinding wheel mounted in top front, and a yellow rubber power cord with 2-prong plug is attached at right back. Speed selector inside handle front has a yellow plastic knob above brushed metal plate printed "HIGH", "MED", "LOW / SHARPEN" and "OFF" in black. Product name debossed in metallic gold across right side of case; model specifications, manufacturer's name and UL safety mark stamped on base underside. Beaters unmarked.
Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
About Weller Pottery:
Samuel A. Weller founded Weller Pottery in 1987 in Fultonham, Ohio, his hometown. Relocated later to Zanesville to take advantage of both clay deposits and natural gas for the kilns, Weller is credited with producing the first fancy glazed ware in Zanesville in 1893. After acquiring Lonhuda Pottery, Weller began to produce underglaze-decorated artware with subtle color gradations produced with an atomizer, echoing the technique pioneered by Rookwood Pottery. Over the years, Weller, Roseville, and Owens Potteries followed the artistic lead of Rookwood, finding ways to mass produce popular forms and colors. Between 1902 and 1907, Weller Pottery was distinguished by the work of French designer Jacques Sicard, who developed intense metallic lusters on iridescent backgrounds. After 1910, wares were designed to require less individual artistic attention, and by 1915, Weller was the largest art pottery in the world with more than forty salesmen, hundreds of workers, and twenty-five kilns (Kovel and Kovel 1993:244). The art pottery line ended with the death of Samuel Weller in 1925, and all pottery production was discontinued in 1948.
(Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
About the Object:
Tall cylindrical vase patering toward neck. Flared lip on broad short neck. Second line "Dickens Ware." Detailed incised drawing of woman in pink dress reclining in hammock and reading to a little girl in blue dress who is sitting among flowers. Pale matte glaze. Light green ground. Brown coloration in the incised lines.
Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, or Tiffany Studios
ID Number
CE.96416ab
accession number
30453
catalog number
96416ab
maker number
x 856 (scratched)
Description (Brief)
Favrile glass. Body is of light green glass. Form: shortened ovoid body with short large concave neck and flaring lip. Cover is shouldered on its lower side; top has a conical center trumpet shape and terminates in a tapering rod, its end looped back and bent partly around the shaft. Decorated with red-tinted grasses over the entire surface; iridescent. Purchased from Charles Tiffany for $70.00.
Part of a nine-piece “Toastmaster Hospitality” set (1989.0308.01-.09). Electric two-slice pop-up toaster, design shows the influence of the "skyscraper" Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s. Chrome-plated metal. Block form, architectural, streamlined, with fluted sides and two flat, plastic handles, one on either side, black molded plastic. One handle activates the toaster when pressed down and is embossed: “TOASTMASTER”. Molded plastic temperature knob, metal is engraved: “LIGHT/DARK”. Base is molded, stacked, four hidden plastic feet, black. Fabric covered power cord attached, black and white, black molded plastic plug, two-pronged, embossed: “BELDEN/1,858,196 PAT. NO’S 1,858,197”. Sticker attached to underside with cleaning instructions. Small metal tag attached to underside, embossed: “MANUFACTURED BY McGRAW ELECTRIC COMPANY/WATERS-GENTER DIV., MPLS., MINN., U.S.A./U.S. PAT. 1,698,146 1,387,670 1,394,450 1,676,257 1,866,808/R.E. 18923 OTHERS PENDING/V-110 A-10-NO. B-449066-MOD. 1B5”. Tape residue on two spots on metal body, otherwise pristine condition, appears unused. Original box and packing material included (see 1989.0308.10)
Patents:
1,698,146: January 8, 1929, Charles P. Strite, for “Bread toaster”
1,387,670: August 16, 1921, Charles P. Strite, for “Bread-toaster”
1,394,450: October 18, 1921, Charles P. Strite, for “Bread-toaster”
1,676,257: May 19, 1926, Thomas C. Forbes, for “Electric switch”
1,866,808: March 19, 1930, Murray Ireland, for "Toaster"
1,858,196: May 10, 1932, Hugo H. Wermine, assignor to Belden Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois, for “Electric plug connecter”
1,858,197: May 10, 1932, Hugo H. Wermine, assignor to Belden Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois, for “Electric plug connecter”
The set includes a toast cutter, serving tray, and six matching dishes.
This model (1B5, Two-slice) was produced July 1934- June 1936. Based on the serial number, this particular toaster was produced July 1935- June 1936. The two-slice Toastmaster was introduced in August 1930.
Maker is McGraw Electric Company, Toastmaster Products Division, c. 1912-present, though no longer manufacturing household appliances, and now known as McGraw-Edison.
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
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.
Since Kodak introduced the Brownie in 1900, a variety of easy-to-use cameras have been marketed, especially to women. The Kodak Petite from 1935, part of the Kodak Coquette set, came with a matching compact and lipstick case in a variety of color choices so that one might use it as an accessory to fashionable outfits.