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Another Wallflower
This wallpaper was once part of a showroom sample book that was unbound at some point and then later donated to the Cooper Hewitt. The samples are a nice group of art nouveau and Mission-style wallpapers. This paper is a good example of American art nouveau design with its large-scale floral motif filling the width...
Geometry Meets Nature
This wallpaper manufactured by Wallace Wall-Paper Co. is dated 1906-08. Although it is machine-printed on paper, the vertical thread-like lines make it look like a woven textile. A variety of textiles have been used to cover walls, so it is not surprising that the earliest and consistent influence on wallpaper design has come from textiles....
Smithsonian Stats
Here’s some impressive trivia: Q – How many Museums are there in the Smithsonian? A – 19, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Q – How many objects in the collections? A – 137,000,000. Q – How many visitors last year? A – 30,000,000. Q – How many website visits? A – 188,000,000. Yes, those...
Sustainable Sampling
At the end of the introduction to the Multiple Choice exhibition, the curator reflects that, “as contemporary design industries move to open-sourcing and electronic formats for the marketing of their products, physical samples may soon become obsolete.” From a future academic and archival view point, this is a sad possibility, as material sampling formats contain...