about

The Object of the Week blog is written by Cooper Hewitt’s curators, graduate fellows, and contributing researchers and scholars. Posts are published every week and present research on an object from the museum’s collection. With over 210,000 objects spanning thirty centuries of decorative arts and design, Object of the Week explores the material culture of textiles, graphic design, furniture, products, architectural drawings, wallcoverings, and much more.

Image features a white-enameled beehive-shaped hanging lamp divided into five horizontal segments by perforated brass bands. The lamp hangs from a white cord at center top. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Aura of Light
“A lamp… [is] always part of an environment…. When working on… public building[s], I noticed that such furnishings and appliances were necessary to create the right unity, and then I designed them. The fact that later on they can also fit in another environment is another story.”[1] Lighting had become a significant part of Alvar...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Cynthia Trope
Date
July 13, 2020
Image features a drawing of an altar in a neoclassical style, with architectural plan. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Surprise Victory for Robert Mylne
On September 23rd, 1758, an aspiring architect named Robert Mylne (1733 – 1811) wrote to his younger brother William (1734 – 1790) with astonishing news. At twenty-four years old, Robert had just become the first Briton awarded top prize in the Concorso Clementino, a famous architecture competition held every three years in Rome.[1] This drawing...
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Julia Siemon
Date
July 6, 2020
Image features a wallpaper panel showing yearbook portraits of teenage boys displayed in decorative oval frames surrounded by flowers on a bright rainbow-colored ground printed in fluorescent ink and black rayon flock. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Framing The Bullies
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection.  Bright-faced youths peer back at you from a vibrant web of floral foliage. But this wallpaper, titled Bullies, strikes a scornful tone. Multi-disciplinary artist Virgil Marti sourced the portraits seen in the wallpaper from his...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Matthew Kennedy
Date
June 29, 2020
Image features a ceramic vase with a slender neck and bulbous base. The neck is smooth and gilded. The base has a prickly, fur-like texture and is light pink. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Surreal Provocateurs
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection.  Nature has a way of informing us—however we engage, we learn from its resilient processes. Nature also has a way of amusing, perplexing and delighting us with its complex and idiosyncratic forms. This edifying and...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Matthew Kennedy
Date
June 22, 2020
Image features a design drawing for a retail kiosk, consisting of a red platform with wheels supporting a black pyramid surmounted by a rectangle with a photograph of fashion designer Willi Smith in profile. A rectangular, black and white banner, proclaiming “WilliWear/WilliSmith” is on a pole at the top. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Radical Retail
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection.  In 1987, artist and designer Dan Friedman was commissioned by his friends and collaborators Willi Smith and Laurie Mallet to design the interior of a new Paris retail store for their clothing brand WilliWear. In...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Julie Pastor
Date
June 15, 2020
Image features: Silk embroidery in pale colors on dark blue linen. A horizontally and vertically symmetrical floral pattern in the Morris style. Please scroll to read the blog post about this object.
The Titan’s Daughter
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection. A version of this post was originally published on June 20, 2016. May Morris will forever be in the shadow of her famous father William Morris, the chief protagonist of the English Arts and Crafts movement,...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Rebekah Pollock
Date
June 1, 2020
Image features a young girl sitting at a table with a tool in her hand, modeling a figurine in clay. She faces right, in profile. A potted plant or flower arrangement is on the table, at right. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Virginia Modeling
Jerome Myers always had a sketchbook close at hand. When weather prevented him from sketching city life in New York, he would turn instead to self-portraits or drawings of his family. In this sketch, the artist’s daughter—Virginia—sits at a table, making a small figurine out of clay. Born in Petersburg, Virginia, Myers moved with his...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Laura Fravel
Date
May 25, 2020
This image features a book page showing illustrations and vignettes of characters, and objects in vibrant Day-Glo colors. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Strange Brew: Creating Fluorescent Pigments
Day-Glo® : a moniker describing shades of orange, pink, green, blue, and yellow so bright they seem almost incandescent. The Day-Glo® Designer’s Guide, a trade catalogue in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Library, was published in 1969 at the height of the psychedelic era. The catalogue celebrates Day-Glo® colors at the peak of their popularity with the...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Elizabeth Broman
Date
May 18, 2020
Image features: Tablecloth with square and rectangular compartments containing whimsical scenes inspired by Mughal and Persian miniature paintings and book illustrations. Scenes include seated musician on a carpet surrounded by flowering trees and swans, elephants with howdahs strapped to their backs, riders on horseback with parasols, and figures seated in elaborate garden pavilions. Primarily in shades of green, blue and pink. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Poetic Tablecloth
This colorful tablecloth was designed by Marion Dorn Kauffer, an accomplished twentieth-century designer primarily known for her textiles and carpets. Designing across different media, she also created wallpapers, illustrations, and graphics. The printed pattern that decorates this tablecloth features a series of square and rectangular vignettes inspired by Mughal painted miniatures from India. The vignettes...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
May 11, 2020
Image features an upright, rectangular poster featuring a motif of a stylized cross in blue, black and orange. At the center, a kneeling man holds a bow and arrow. Decorative motifs with Dutch wording are In each of the four corners of the cross. A roundel with the words, Bestaans zerkerheid, is at the top of the composition; above this are the words: RADEN van ARBEID in blue and orange. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Designer Takes Aim
In celebration of May Day—at a moment when the essential role so many workers play in our community is at the forefront of our minds—we are re-posting a modified version of this blog by Virginia McBride originally published November 8, 2015. Formerly a 2014 Peter Krueger curatorial intern, then a Curatorial Assistant, and Cataoguer in Cooper Hewitt’s...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Virginia McBride
Date
May 4, 2020
Image features a book opened to a pop-up paper construction of a black and white fishing trawler balanced on a house of cards decorated with playing card suits and a fish-as-joker motif, and images of fishes, all resting on a page spread printed with the netting and the poem "House of Cods."
House of Cods
In  recognition of  Smithsonian’s Earth Optimism Digital Summit  (April 22 – 26, 2020), this week’s post features a work from the  Design Library, focused on environmental issues. The artist’s  book,  House of Cods, published by  Linda Smith and Picnic Press  in 1996, presents an engaging use of the book as a  form  of artistic expression, here addressing the environmental impact of ...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Erica Schaumberg
Date
April 27, 2020
Image features a presidential campaign textile for Hubert H. Humphrey with alternating rows of the letter H enclosed by a green and blue border. Signature of Hubert H. Humphrey is in the bottom right of green border. Each square meant to be cut to make a campaign scarf. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Signature Scarf
This Hubert H. Humphrey “signature scarf” fabric was designed for Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign by Frankie Welch (a.k.a. Mary Frances Barnett), a textile and fashion designer as well as personal shopper and boutique owner. When her husband’s new position at the CIA first brought the Welch family to Washington, DC area in the 1950s, Frankie taught home...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
April 20, 2020
Image features a rectangular four-panel folding screen decorated with a large, bright orange abstracted flame-like design against a tan ground; a wide blue, and narrow green band surround the perimeter of the screen. The reverse decorated by four green spirals, one on each panel. All four panels connected with striped orange border on tan ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Art into Life. A Life into Art.
Flowing forms of bright orange spread upwards, flickering across the four panels of this folding screen. The work, Fire-Orange, is one of a series of folding screens the American artist Jack Youngerman made beginning in 1978. Fire-Orange exemplifies how Youngerman, who passed away on February 19th at the age of 93, thoughtfully and creatively explored the nature and boundaries...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
April 13, 2020
Image features brown paper bag, printed with representation of a wood-framed chair.
The Chieftain Chair Goes Shopping
This mid-twentieth century shopping bag celebrates an icon of Danish Modern furniture design. The bag, created in 1949 by Mike Romer and Ida Fabricius, is embellished with a boldly rendered illustration of the Chieftain chair (Høvdingestolen), designed in that same year by Danish architect and furniture designer Finn Juhl. With its dramatically curved leather upholstery...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
poolr
Date
April 6, 2020
This image features a view from the Brooklyn Academy of Music stage looking out at the theater’s great hall and balconies festooned with red, white, and blue streamers, bunting, and American flags. People in 19th attire meander along shopping for household wares and other goods. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Fair Ladies
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post highlights women designers in the collection. Author: Adrienne Meyer This lithograph is one of four in the Cooper Hewitt Design Library depicting scenes from the Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair of 1864.  These images capture some of the spectacle...
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Elizabeth Broman
Date
March 30, 2020