Collections Search Results
Your search found 61 records from all Smithsonian Institution collections.
Page 1 of 4
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- date made
- late 18th century
- ID Number
- 1982.0090.33A-B
- accession number
- 1982.0090
- catalog number
- 1982.0090.33A-B
-
- ID Number
- TR.039198
- catalog number
- 039198
- accession number
- 20833
-
-
- Description (Brief)
- Pin-back buttons serve many purposes. They are efficient advertising vehicles, handy for fund-raising in support of a cause, concise statements of a person’s beliefs, a form of educational outreach, and convenient ice-breakers for conversation. NMAH has several hundred pin-back buttons related to disability, including this one from 1989.
- date made
- 1989
- maker
- Buttons & Badges Inc.
- ID Number
- 2004.3055.16
- nonaccession number
- 2004.3055
- catalog number
- 2004.3005.16
-
- date made
- 1792
- ID Number
- 2017.0079.01
- accession number
- 2017.0079
- catalog number
- 2017.0079.01
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-
- ID Number
- TE.T07736.000
- catalog number
- T07736.000
- accession number
- 139053
-
- ID Number
- DL.394418
- catalog number
- 394418
-
- Description
- Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
- These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
- This hand colored print is an interior scene of a family of five seated in the parlor. The father is seated on an ornate red upolstered sofa, his young son leaning against his knee holding a ball or piece of fruit, perhaps an apple. An infant sits in the mother's lap, while the eldest child, a daughter stands alongside the mother, entertaining the baby with her doll. The mother is seated in an upholstered red chair. Heavy drapes, a partial view of a landscape picture in a fancy frame, a patterned rug and foot pillow on floor complete this domestic scene. The couple gaze at each other and compositionally depict a balanced and equal family unit. This is one of several prints with the same title, depicting a contented family. These happy family scenes were meant to contrast with the restless, discontented bachelor prints.
- This print was produced by the lithographic firm of Kelloggs & Comstock. In 1848, John Chenevard Comstock developed a partnership with E.B. and E.C. Kellogg. In 1850, Edmund Burke Kellogg left the firm, leaving his brother Elijah Chapman Kellogg and J.C. Comstock to run the lithography firm as Kellogg and Comstock. The short-lived partnership disbanded in 1851. It was not until 1855 that Edmund Burke Kellogg rejoined his brother E.C. Kellogg and continued the success of the family’s Lithography firm.
- date made
- 1850
- distributors
- Ensign, Thayer and Company
- maker
- Kelloggs & Comstock
- ID Number
- DL.60.2261
- catalog number
- 60.2261
- accession number
- 228146
- maker number
- 266
-
- associated user
- unknown
- ID Number
- 1981.0397.03
- accession number
- 1981.0397
- catalog number
- 1981.0397.03
-
- ID Number
- TE.T07735.000
- catalog number
- T07735.000
- accession number
- 139053
-
- Description
- Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
- These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class, and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
- This hand colored print is a portrait of man, woman and four young children, one an infant in mother's lap in a richly furnished interior setting. The family is clothed in fancy antebellum dress. The room contains an elaborate sofa, foot stools, two heavily framed bust portraits of the husband and wife, heavy blue drapes, an ornate rug, patterned wallpaper and an intricately carved chair rail. The children and father all face the mother as if seeking her guidance. This is one of several prints with the same title, depicting a contented family. These happy family scenes were meant to contrast with the restless, discontented bachelor prints.
- The print was produced by Sarony & Major. Napoleon Sarony (1821–1896) was born in Quebec, Canada, and trained under several lithography firms including Currier & Ives and H.R. Robinson. Sarony was also known for his successful experiments in early photography, eventually developing a cabinet-sized camera. In 1846, Sarony partnered with another former apprentice of Nathaniel Currier, Henry B. Major. Together they created Sarony & Major Lithography firm. Joseph F. Knapp joined the firm in 1857. Sarony, Major & Knapp earned a solid reputation for lithography and the company was especially known for its fine art chromolithography. Unfortunately, by the 1870s, the firm shifted focus to the more profitable area of advertising. It also expanded to become the conglomerate known as the American Lithographic Company, successfully producing calendars, advertising cards, and posters. In 1930 they were bought out by Consolidated Graphics.
- date made
- ca 1850
- distributors
- Sowle & Shaw
- artist
- Sarony, Napoleon
- maker
- Sarony & Major
- ID Number
- DL.60.2266
- catalog number
- 60.2266
- accession number
- 228146
-
- Description
- This square piano was made by Jonas Chickering in Boston, Massachusetts in 1832. During this period, Chickering received capitalization from John Mackay, a wealthy Boston shipping merchant, who assisted also in expanding Chickering’s markets both in America and elsewhere. This piano is serial number 1129 and has a compass of FF-f4, an English double action, leather hammers, double-strings throughout, 2 pedals: all dampers and upper dampers, an iron string plate frame, and a mahogany case.
- date made
- 1828-1832
- maker
- Chickering, Jonas
- ID Number
- MI.70.19
- catalog number
- 70.19
- accession number
- 290543
-
- Description
- This teapot was made in England about 1766-1770, possibly by the Cockpit Hill Factory, Derby, England. Inscribed on one side of the teapot is “No Stamp Act” and on the other is “America, Liberty Restored,” both within flowerheads and stylized scrolling leaftips in black. The cover is painted with a matching border.
- Teapots such as this were made for sale to the American market soon after the 1766 repeal of the hated Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The Stamp Act required American colonists to pay a tax on all printed materials—from documents to playing cards. This was the first direct tax on the American colonies and provoked an immediate and violent response throughout the colonies.
- The Stamp Act and ensuing Stamp Act Crisis were crucial to the shaping of the political landscape in the U.S. According to historian Gordon Wood, the colonists’ response to the Stamp Act emphasized “the suffrage itself as a basic prerequisite of representation—an emphasis that had momentous implications for the development of American political thought.” Wood argues that the Stamp Act Crisis justified the formation of “numerous associations and congresses” and led to an attempt to draw “a distinction between external and internal taxes in an effort to delimit the separate spheres of authority the colonies and Parliament had held during the eighteenth century.”
- In addition, the “No Stamp Act” teapot documents the often conflicted relationships between trade, international politics, and global. Associations between England and the colonies were certainly strong, and many British citizens supported or at least sympathized with the colonists. But the fact that this teapot was made in England for the American market to celebrate the repeal of an official Act of the British government speaks volumes about the importance of trade with colonial America to British industry. The experiences of the British pottery industry, as documented by this teapot, illustrate the rapid changes occurring in the international economy of the 3rd quarter of the 18th-century. Before this period, ceramics were imported to the American colonies from many countries—Holland, France, Germany, and China as well as from England. Around the time the “No Stamp Act” teapot was made, England’s potteries were industrializing rapidly, increasing production, lowering costs, and forcing out competition in the American market. But, production capacity quickly outgrew existing demand. The potteries responded in many ways, one of which was to appeal to the American market with decorations that directly contradict British political will.
- The teapot also serves as documentation of the intersections between home and public life. In the pre-revolutionary era, the fashionable social custom of taking tea was fast becoming politicized. In her 1961 monograph on tea drinking, Rodris Roth points to the importance of tea drinking to “the social life and traditions of the Americans” as well as to the political, historical, and economic importance that tea holds to U.S. history. By the time the “No Stamp Act” teapot was made, tea was very popular in the colonies and accessible to most Americans. The importance of tea and tea drinking to colonial society is underscored by the controversy surrounding it; in 1767 merchants and citizens protested the Townshend Act which imposed a duty on tea (as well as other commodities), and in 1773 the Boston tea party became a defining moment in American history.
- Date made
- 1766-1770
- maker
- unknown
- ID Number
- 2006.0229.01ab
- accession number
- 2006.0229
- catalog number
- 2006.0229.01ab
-
- Date made
- 1725 - 1780
- ID Number
- 1988.0320.001
- catalog number
- 1988.0320.001
- accession number
- 1988.0320
-
- Description
- The largest artifact in the museum, this Georgian-style, 2 ½-story timber-framed house was built in the 1760s and stood at 16 Elm Street in the center of Ipswich, Massachusetts, until 1963 when efforts by Ipswich citizens saved it from the bulldozer. The house was carefully taken apart—the frame, chimney, and many other pieces were shipped to the Museum and reassembled.
- Today, the house is the centerpiece of the exhibition Within These Walls , and visitors are able to peer through its walls, windows, and doors to view settings played out against the backdrop of Colonial America, the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the industrial era, and World War II. The exhibition tells the story of five ordinary families, selected from many, who lived in this house over 200 years and made history in their kitchens and parlors, through everyday choices and personal acts of courage and sacrifice.
- date made
- ca 1760
- resident
- Caldwell, Josiah
- Caldwell, Lucy
- Choate, Abraham
- Choate, Sarah
- Dodge, Abraham
- Dodge, Bethiah
- Lynch, Catherine
- Lynch, Mary
- owner
- Dodge, Abraham
- Caldwell, Josiah
- Choate, Sarah
- Dodge, Bethiah
- Caldwell, Lucy
- Lynch, Catherine
- Lynch, Mary
- resident
- Scott, Mary
- owner
- Choate, Abraham
- ID Number
- DL.64.545
- catalog number
- 64.545
- accession number
- 252318
-
-
- Description
- This medallion, first made in 1787, became a popular icon in the British movement for the abolition of the slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Staffordshire pottery manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood probably engaged sculptor Henry Webber to create the design of a kneeling slave, his hands in chains, a figure based on the cameo gemstones of antiquity. The modeler, William Hackwood, then prepared the medallion for production in Wedgwood’s black jasper against a white ground of the same ceramic paste. Above the figure the words “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER” appeal to the reason and sentiment of late-eighteenth-century men and women, disturbed by accounts of atrocities committed on the trans-Atlantic slave trade routes, and informed by abolitionist literature distributed in coffee-houses, taverns, public assembly rooms, reading societies, and private homes. The medallion expressed in material form the growing horror at the barbarous practices of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the premises upon which that trade thrived. Wedgwood produced the medallion for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave trade, founded in 1787 by Thomas Clarkson, who in 1786 published his Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. Wedgwood was a member of the Committee – later known as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave trade - and it is likely that distribution of the medallions took place through the organization, and that Wedgwood bore the costs himself.
- In America, Quaker groups were active in their opposition to the slave trade in the late seventeenth century. When British opposition emerged in the 18th century from among the non-conformist congregations - Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, and Unitarians – communication between the North American and British groups was quickly established. In 1788, Josiah Wedgwood sent a packet of his medallions to Benjamin Franklin, then president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, with the words “It gives me great pleasure to be embarked on this occasion in the same great and good cause with you, and I ardently hope for the final completion of our wishes.” Franklin wrote to Wedgwood: "I am persuaded [the medallion] may have an Effect equal to that of the best written Pamphlet in procuring favour to those oppressed people." Neither Franklin, nor Wedgwood, lived to see those wishes fulfilled.
- The medallion became the emblem for the British movement carried forward by Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, leading to Parliament’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Men and women appropriated the cameo for personal ornament on snuff-box lids, shoe buckles, hair pins, pendants, and bracelets. By 1807, and before the abolition of slavery in all the British colonies in 1838, many versions of the kneeling slave found their way onto the surface of artifacts made in ceramic, metal, glass and fabric. The representation of the slave in the Wedgwood medallion carries several conflicting meanings. Here we see a man on his knees, pleading to his white masters, and perhaps to God at a time when many slaves took the Christian faith. The rhetorical question, “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER”, calls for pity, but at the same time demands a review of the black African’s place in the world as fellow human being, rather than a separate species, a status conferred upon them by slave owners and traders. The image of the kneeling slave is noble, but at the same time without threat; he kneels, and he is in chains. He may represent the literary figure of the “noble savage,” and at the same time draw forth in late 18th-century white men and women their sense of magnanimity. Materially, the medallion underscores the message with the figure rendered in black on a white, or in some versions a pale straw-colored background.
- Against fierce opposition, and for all their contradictions, hypocrisies, and ill-informed sentiments, the British campaigners for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and for the abolition of slavery, were astonishingly successful in achieving their aims. Strategies like widespread petitioning, the distribution of leaflets, pamphlets, and printed images, and the production of artifacts like this medallion, established the tactics for subsequent political and social pressure groups on local, national, and now on a global scale. The printed T-shirt, badges, and mugs distributed or sold today are the descendents of the Wedgwood medallion.
- Guyatt, M. “The Wedgwood Slave Medallion,” Journal of Design History, 13, no. 2 (2000): 93-105
- Margolin, S. “And Freedom to the Slave”: Antislavery ceramics, 1787-1865, Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover and London: Chipstone Foundation, 2002), pp. 80-109
- Myers, S. ‘Wedgwood’s Slave Medallion and its Anti-Slavery Legacy’
- Walvin, J. “British Abolitionism, 1787-1838,” Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity, edited by Anthony Tibbles (London: HMSO and National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, 1994), pp. 87-95
- Date made
- after 1787
- maker
- Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
- ID Number
- CE.68.150
- catalog number
- 68.150
- 1987.0005.51
- accession number
- 1987.0005
-
- date made
- circa 1764- 1799
- maker
- Daniel Bayley Pottery
- ID Number
- CE.391371
- catalog number
- 391371
-
- ID Number
- CE.58.283A
- catalog number
- 58.283A
- accession number
- 219034
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