Natural Resources
The natural resources collections offer centuries of evidence about how Americans have used the bounty of the American continent and coastal waters. Artifacts related to flood control, dam construction, and irrigation illustrate the nation's attempts to manage the natural world. Oil-drilling, iron-mining, and steel-making artifacts show the connection between natural resources and industrial strength.
Forestry is represented by saws, axes, a smokejumper's suit, and many other objects. Hooks, nets, and other gear from New England fisheries of the late 1800s are among the fishing artifacts, as well as more recent acquisitions from the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Whaling artifacts include harpoons, lances, scrimshaw etchings in whalebone, and several paintings of a whaler's work at sea. The modern environmental movement has contributed buttons and other protest artifacts on issues from scenic rivers to biodiversity.
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Alençon Needle Lace Collar
- Description
- Grape and vine motifs with shadow effect decorate this cotton Alençon lace collar from the late 19th century. Horsehair is used to support picots on the outside edge and on some interior motifs. The entre-deux at the neck edge is made with Droschel bobbin lace. It is attributable to the Lefébure workshop, Bayeux, France, and the pattern for this collar is in Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle, Alençon, France. See Bruggeman, Kant in Europa, (L'Europe de la Dentelle), 1997 p. 169, and Dépalle, Brigitte Delesques, La Dentelle à l'aiguille, p. 81. It matches cuffs or borders TE*T17893B and TE*T17893C.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1855-1900
- designer
- Lefebure, Ernest
- designed and made by the workshop
- Lefébure, Ernest
- ID Number
- TE.T17893A
- catalog number
- T17893A
- accession number
- 319013
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
