Object of the Day
Discover a different object from the Museum’s collection every day of the week!
Museum curators, conservators, and educators, as well as design enthusiasts like our teen Design Scholars, docents, and Master’s students, are sharing their favorite objects from Cooper-Hewitt’s incredible collection.
Many of these objects will be featured in the expanded collection galleries when Cooper-Hewitt reopens in 2014. Until then, “Object of the Day” is your uniquely-curated corner of the Museum!
I Wish I Had Been There!!Posted by Elizabeth Broman, on Sunday March 31, 2013Between 1909 and 1948, the Grand Palais near the Champs-Elysées in Paris featured remarkable decorative interiors which housed automotive, aeronautical and many other types of trade shows. For the buildings and other structures of the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931, decorative lighting helped create a unity among the diverse architectures. lighting, André Granet, Smithsonian Libraries, Décors Éphémères, fountains, fireworks, lighting exhibitions, Grand Palais, lumière, Colonial Exposition of 1931 |
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Branded in Early Twentieth-Century ViennaPosted by Rebecca McNamara, on Saturday March 30, 2013Today’s luxury designers sometimes find unique ways to brand their products without a label—Christian Louboutin’s red sole, Bottega Veneta’s woven purse—while others create logo-patterns, as Louis Vuitton has done. Many mid-range product lines, like those of Apple or Starbucks, proclaim their name loudly with simple, meaningful logos. While it may seem that logos and brand identities today are most concerned with profits, the bottom line was not always the reason behind marking one’s goods. Werkstätte, Koloman Moser, silver, silver-plated, box, hallmarks, rose, vienna |
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Design for Corsage OrnamentPosted by Sarah Donahue, on Friday March 29, 2013Rene Lalique, Siegfried Bing, Hector Guimard, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Art Nouveau, Faberge, Art Deco, Glass, jewelry design |
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A Fabric with a Touch of TomorrowPosted by Maleyne Syracuse, on Thursday March 28, 2013America 1957. Eisenhower was the President. Elvis was the King. And Ford Motor Company introduced its new 1957 automobiles, a “new kind of Ford with a touch of tomorrow.” The new Fords were wider, longer, lower, and zippier. Ford Motor Company, Automobile Design, Fairlane 500 Club, Town Victoria, Marianne Strengell |
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ColorformsPosted by Pamela Horn, on Wednesday March 27, 2013Just before joining Cooper-Hewitt (C-H) I clocked a lot of time on its newly revealed collections portion of its website. Searching the database of more than 115,000 objects using the "random" search function became my favorite method of choice. |
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One Child's SederPosted by Maleyne Syracuse, on Tuesday March 26, 2013This charming textile depicting a Seder was made in the late 1930s by A. Nedby, a ten-year old student at the Educational Alliance Art School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Educational Alliance, Words Progress Administration, Federal Art Project, Great Depression, Passover, Seder |
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Hidden TreasurePosted by Floramae McCarron-Cates, on Monday March 25, 2013So, realistically, what were the chances that an important decorative art drawing, executed by perhaps the most important artist of the Italian Renaissance, would be discovered in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum? Well, as it turned out, pretty likely. It was no accident that in the spring of 2002, Sir Timothy Clifford, then Director of the National Museum of Scotland, began a two month project to survey the substantial collection of Italian drawings here at the museum. Michelangelo, drawing, lighting design, lighting, Italian Renaissance |
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Silk and the CityPosted by Susan Brown, on Sunday March 24, 2013The cityscape is a natural subject for textile design—grid-based, repetitive and boldly geometric-- well, at least Manhattan after the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 30s. The Museum has numerous designs with the city as inspiration, including designs by Philip Johnson, Alexander Girard, Lydia Bush Brown, and Arthur Sanderson & Sons. (If you have a piece of Manhattan by Ruth Reeves you’d like to donate, we’d love to hear from you!) Clayton Knight, cityscapes, Manhattan, Stehli Silks, Kneeland Green, Edward Steichen, Helen Wallis, jazz, illustration |
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Alchemy In SituPosted by Pamela Lawton, on Saturday March 23, 2013“The trip was … one of risk … no one is allowed to sketch alive there … an artist who ventured there was shot while attempting a sketch … I flung open my sketchbook and drew the scene roughly … we then dashed down the path and seized another view and so on sketching and running...”[1] Frederic Edwin Church thus describes snatching a sketch in Petra. Frederic Edwin Church, landscape, Niagra Falls, Thomas Cole, Hudson River School |
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William Lescaze's Townhouse Blueprint: Creating a New Look for New York ResidencesPosted by Rebecca McNamara, on Friday March 22, 2013This blueprint in the Cooper-Hewitt collection depicts architect William Lescaze's radical and trendsetting four-story townhouse at 211 East 48th Street, New York. Little, if any, changes were made between this design—or between a sketch, also in the museum's collection—and the final structure, built in 1933–34. William Lescaze, New York City, townhouse, Architecture, blueprint, drawing, Matthew Baird |
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