cooper hewitt blog
Written by Rebeca Méndez Since I can remember, I have always spent hours observing nature, asking “Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? What are the essential mechanisms of nature?” I was born and raised in Mexico City by parents educated as chemical engineers. They taught me to see the...
Gay Façade, a textile design featuring whimsical line drawings of geometrically shaped suns with smiling faces, was designed by John Hull for Associated American Artists. It was produced in multiple colorways, another of which (1994-38-8) is currently in the museum’s collection. In this version, suns are outlined in black and partially filled by red and...
Walking through Central Park I enjoyed seeing all the brightly colored leaves in the trees, while the fallen leaves crunched underfoot. I thought this wallpaper with its warm colors and hints of green seemed to beautifully capture the essence of the fall day. This is a fairly stylized landscape scene which includes trees, vines, and...
The career of Alice Cordelia Morse reflects the changing role of women in art and society in the late 19th century. Morse was able to achieve success in many artistic fields, designing book covers, illustrations, and stained glass, while also experimenting with other decorative media such as china painting and needlework. Although this title-page design was...
Author: Zenia Malmer The ‘Kubus’ clear glass stacking and modular storage system was created in 1938 by German designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1900-90), who frequented the Bauhaus school in the former Weimar Republic. Kubus, which was manufactured by Lausitzer Glasverein, was one of Wagenfeld’s most well-known affordable designs in pressed glass that he created for commercial...
Author: Madelyn Shaw For several years, I have been immersed in the subject of wool as a wartime resource. The global trade in wool grew exponentially in the 19th century, fed by the opening of new regions to sheep farming, the industrialization of the production of wool yarns and textiles, and the seemingly continuous need...
The museum as “practical working laboratory” that sisters Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt envisioned for the study of the decorative arts, could not have been realized without the extensive collection of books and supporting materials found in the library at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Numerous books about process, such as the...
One lesser known area of the Cooper Hewitt’s collection are folding screens covered with wallpaper. Many of these contain panels from scenic wallpapers mounted on the face of the screen. Today’s object is an eight-panel folding screen containing a scene called Environs de Paris from the scenic paper titled “Jardín Baujon beí Neuílly.” This is...
Stanford White’s architectural legacy of beauty and sophistication is celebrated throughout New York City. Inspired by European architecture, White was a founder of the City Beautiful movement that spread across the country at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1878, as a young artist, White had traveled throughout Normandy and Belgium by train in...
