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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Stoneware jar
- Description
- The Remmey and Crolius families dominated the New York stoneware industry from the early 1700s through the early 1800s. Both families emigrated from Germany, bringing with them the stoneware traditions of their homeland. Sometimes business associates, the two families also inter-married. Remmey family members went on to establish stoneware factories in Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1795-1830
- maker
- Remmey III, John
- ID Number
- 1980.0614.363
- accession number
- 1980.0614
- catalog number
- 1980.0614.363
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Sèvres porcelain teapot and cover
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1830
- ID Number
- CE.P-380ab
- catalog number
- P-380ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Sèvres sugar bowl (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1838
- ID Number
- CE.P-125ab
- catalog number
- P-125ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Sèvres teapot (part of a service)
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1838
- ID Number
- CE.P-124ab
- catalog number
- P-124ab
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Sèvres stand for a tête a tête tea service
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c.1838
- 1838
- ID Number
- CE.P-123
- catalog number
- P-123
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Sevres porcelain plate
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1834
- maker
- Sevres
- ID Number
- CE.P-1057
- catalog number
- P-1057
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Sevres porcelain cup
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1839
- ID Number
- CE.P-142
- catalog number
- P-142
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Sevres porcelain cup
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1839
- ID Number
- CE.P-1062A
- catalog number
- P-1062A
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Stoneware Water Cooler
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Sèvres porcelain soup plate
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1839
- ID Number
- CE.P-379
- catalog number
- P-379
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Sevres porcelain dish
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1839
- ID Number
- CE.P-766A
- catalog number
- P-766A
- accession number
- 225282
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
"Lighthall's Improved Horizontal and Beam Engine," Patent Model
- Description
- This model was submitted to the U.S. Patent Office with the application for the patent granted to William A. Lighthall, of Albany, New York, April 14, 1838, no. 696.
- The engine is designed primarily for boat propulsion and permits the use of a horizontal steam cylinder installed low within the boat in combination with a beam working vertically as in a beam engine.
- The model is diagrammatic in form, is made of wood, and is not complete. The engine represented is essentially a beam engine laid upon its side so that the cylinder is horizontal and the beam is supported vertically. The patent drawing shows the cylinder placed directly upon the keelson of a boat with the beam held so that the lower end is at the approximate level of the center of the cylinder. A long connecting rod attached to the upper end of the beam reaches back over the cylinder to a crank on the engine shaft, which is located above the cylinder and back of it.
- Reference:
- This description comes from the 1939 Catalog of the Mechanical Collections of the Division of Engineering United States Museum Bulletin 173 by Frank A. Taylor.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1838
- patent date
- 1838-04-14
- inventor
- Lighthall, William A.
- ID Number
- MC.308639
- catalog number
- 308639
- patent number
- 696
- accession number
- 89797
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Simon Willard Tower Clock
- Description
- Almost from the moment of the mechanical clock's invention, the local clock tower on a church or other public building dominated the landscape. Tower clocks announced the time to people within earshot of their bells and regulated urban life in the Western world. The introduction of the pendulum and the anchor escapement in the late seventeenth century made these clocks remarkably accurate. They were set at local noon (when the sun reached its highest point in the sky at a particular location), and thus gave each town a time of its own, depending on its longitude.
- In America, before specialized manufacturers began mass-producing tower clocks in the second half of the nineteenth century, the clocks were built to order by versatile individual clockmakers and, occasionally, by adventurous blacksmiths. The tower clock shown here is one of the few built by Simon Willard (1753-1848) of Boston, the most famous of the many clockmaking members of the Willard family. Willard was inventive as well as prolific, a clockmaker who worked not only for a regional clientele but also for Thomas Jefferson and the outfitters of the U.S. Capitol.
- Marked "Made in 1832 by Simon Willard in his 80th year," this tower clock served for more than a century on the First (Unitarian) Parish in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In all details the movement shows uncompromising craftsmanship. It has a pinwheel dead-beat escapement with maintaining power and a rack-and-snail hour striking train.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1832
- maker
- Willard, Simon
- ID Number
- ME.330398
- catalog number
- 330398
- accession number
- 288890
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Clock Patent Model
- Description
- The depression of 1837 hit Connecticut 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, and a disciple of Eli Terry—had a new idea. A simple, weight-driven, 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. Noble Jerome, a talented clockmaker, quickly made a prototype and received a U.S. patent on it in 1839.
- By that time, mechanized production of clock movements was already underway and would soon reach unprecedented numbers. Whereas the typical factory might produce several thousand wooden clocks per year, 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" 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 traveled 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. Over the next twenty years, in part because of American competition, the British clock industry declined to near extinction.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1839
- patent date
- 1839-06-27
- ID Number
- ME.309112
- catalog number
- 309112
- accession number
- 89797
- patent number
- 1,200
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Patent Model for Web Perfecting Rotary Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a web perfecting rotary press which was granted patent number 468. Flat forms of type were arranged around the surface of two type cylinders to form polygons. The web of paper was printed on both sides at this press, then sent to a drying machine still in the web, and finally cut into sheets. The inventor is named "Trench" on the patent drawings and "French" on the specification.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1837
- patent date
- 1837-11-20
- maker
- French, Thomas
- ID Number
- GA.11026
- catalog number
- GA*11026
- accession number
- 49064
- patent number
- 000468
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Patent Model for Bed-and-Platen Printing Press
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a bed-and-platen power press with two friskets which carried paper under the platen alternately. The platen was drawn down by toggles against a fixed bed; it was to be powered by man, steam, horse, or water. The invention is considered an unnumbered patent.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1834
- patent date
- 1834-08-22
- maker
- Tufts, Otis
- ID Number
- GA.11025
- catalog number
- GA*11025
- accession number
- 48865
- patent number
- 8380X
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware jug
- Description
- The Remmey family began producing pottery in New York City in 1735, when John Remmey I emigrated from Germany. His grandson, John Remmey III, took over the family business in 1793, continuing to produce some of the finest stoneware made in the United States at the time. The somewhat lopsided incised leaf design on this jug reminds us that each piece was made and decorated by hand.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1791-1831
- maker
- Remmey III, John
- ID Number
- 1977.0803.105
- accession number
- 1977.0803
- catalog number
- 1977.0803.105
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware chamber pot
- Description
- Chamber pots were found in many homes in the United States before the advent of modern indoor plumbing. While some chamber pots were elaborately decorated, this example, made by Paul Cushman of Albany, New York, is strictly utilitarian. The piece is incised only with the name of the potter.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1806-1833
- maker
- Cushman, Paul
- ID Number
- 1977.0803.50
- accession number
- 1977.0803
- catalog number
- 1977.0803.050
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Stoneware flask
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Patent Model for a Paper-Trimming Machine
- Description (Brief)
- This patent model demonstrates an invention for a crank-driven guillotine paper cutter; the invention is considered an unnumbered patent.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1834
- patent date
- 1834-02-28
- maker
- Ames, J.
- ID Number
- 1997.0198.17
- catalog number
- 1997.0198.17
- accession number
- 1997.0198
- patent number
- 8030X
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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