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 broad view of landscape, rendered in lush tones of green and blue. A river cuts through the center of the image, and a figure on horseback appears at the lower right. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Between Constantin and Nogales
The Reverend William Bradford traveled with his sketchbook. Not much else is known about Bradford, who served as a British Army chaplain in Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular War (1807 – 1814). In that conflict, British troops joined Spanish forces in their resistance to Napoleon. As Reverend Bradford accompanied his fellow British soldiers across...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Julia Siemon
Date
February 13, 2020
Image features a wallpaper mural design, appearing like a brightly colored barcode. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Show Your Stripes
A colorful design to brighten your day! Kinetics is a mural design from the Kaleidoscope collection of murals and supergraphics by James Seeman. Resembling a colorized barcode, the design may have been inspired by this emerging technology. Patented in the United States in 1951, it took about twenty years for the barcode to become commercially...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
February 12, 2020
Object features a sheer panel of blue and white stripes. Heavy threads of off-white kibiso create horizontal stripes. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Suzushi Stripe
Suzushi Stripe is part of a series Nuno made from kibiso and raw silk. (The kibiso is the white coarse stripe in the textile.) The combination of these two materials reveals a very rich texture, structure, and surface design. Kibiso, an industrial waste product, is the protective outer layer of the silk cocoon that is “wiped off”...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Matilda McQuaid
Date
February 11, 2020
Image features a polished chrome-plated cocktail service consisting of tall cylindrical cocktail shaker and lid, a rectangular tray with stepped rim; and six cylindrical cups with slender stems and circular feet. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Manhattan Neat
Millions of Americans wanted a drink when Prohibition was repealed at the end of 1933. Perhaps it might be better to say a legal drink? Alcohol consumption for the thirteen years after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment had by no means stopped. In basements of brownstones and behind backroom doors, a generation of Americans...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
February 10, 2020
Image features a drawing showing a view looking up into a circular coffered cupola, sculpted with flowers. An entablature consisting of three windows separated by pillars supports the interior ceiling. A lantern tops the cupola. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Dome and Cupola that Were Not There
This blog post was originally published on  November 30, 2012. This perspective tour de force dazzles the eye with the complexities of its illusionistic architecture. The story behind the work is equally compelling. When the magnificent Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola was constructed in Rome during the late 16th-century Counter Reformation, the newly founded Jesuit order...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Gail Davidson
Date
February 7, 2020
Set of four, cube-shaped chrome-plated shakers with white plastic bases; the tops of two with engraved and pierced with a comet among stars, the comet's "tail" formed by three curved lines of holes; the other two shakers with engraved stars and holes forming the planet Saturn surrounded by a ring. Please scroll down to read the blog post about these objects.
Please Pass the Planet
The clean-lined geometric forms of these salt and pepper shakers show American modernism’s affinity for simplicity. During the 1930s the emergence of chromed metal, steel, and aluminum tableware coincided with the rise of modernist designs for everyday objects. These simple metal cubes were created with cost-effective manufacturing techniques, stamping and piercing, to create utilitarian and...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Cynthia Trope
Date
February 6, 2020
Image features: Textile printed with 5 repeats of a mirror-image panel showing a woman in a red dress and plumed red hat facing left (in the original) and riding a white horse, rearing on its hind legs. A stylized background in shades of rose, chartreuse and white suggests a cloud of dust behind the horse and rider. The drawing is dated 11-3-59 in a black space at the top. The mirror image has the date backward. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Carnet II
Bloomcraft Fabrics, a New York-based producer of woven textiles that collaborated with artists ranging from Rockwell Kent to Gloria Vanderbilt, released the Picasso Collection in 1963. As announced by an advertisement in American Fabrics: “This unusual collection links the work of the world’s greatest living painter and the world of interior design through a series...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Rachel Ward Sepielli
Date
February 5, 2020
Image features a wallpaper design with two putti, two birds, and a goat. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Golden Age, or Two Putti and a Goat
The Golden Age is a delightful wallpaper designed by Walter Crane in 1887 and printed by Jeffrey & Co. in London as part of their Victorian Wall-Paper collection. The design contains two winged putti, standing on a large foliate swag, supporting or carrying a large basket of fruit. There are two large birds, maybe cockatoos,...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
February 4, 2020
Book, "A day at the New York World's Fair with Peter and Wendy"
1964: I was there…in my Orange and Blue
This post was originally published on April 22, 2014. The Cooper-Hewitt Library has a large collection of over 2,000 World’s fair catalogues and books. Some are children’s souvenirs and stories. A day at the New York World’s Fair with Peter and Wendy brings back memories of certain things I remember from visiting the world’s fair.....
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Elizabeth Broman
Date
February 3, 2020
Image features bright red text set against a lime green background. The text is manipulated so that the letters join into a single swirling form evocative of smoke or flame.
Remembering Wes Wilson (1937–2020)
Designer Wes Wilson, who died on January 24, 2020, at age 82, created some of the most memorable posters of the psychedelic era. These wavy-gravy, acid-colored, hand-lettered provocations for the eye accompanied rock shows at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom. Wilson’s posters for the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Association, and other bands...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Ellen Lupton
Date
January 31, 2020
Image features a richly hued wallpaper depicting a vividly colored peacock perched in a cedar tree, amidst purple lilac and yellow wisteria blossoms, all on a black background. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object
As Pretty as a Peacock, indeed
This is one of the most gorgeous and dramatic wallpapers produced during the early twentieth century. The design shows a brilliantly colored peacock perched in a cedar tree, with copious blossoms of lilac and wisteria in yellow and lavender. All of the printed colors pop against the black ground. And note the size of the...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
January 30, 2020
Image features a broad-rimmed circular bowl on a tall base of assembled oval and globular glass forms of opaque or translucent blue, purple, white, and red. The bowl and base decorated with transparent rectangular panels, one blue and one green, and a wavy opaque red glass rod, all hung from brass hooks. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Serious Case of PoMo…
The bubble-like contours and dangling pieces of glass of this bowl are cartoonish and playful. The Efira Bowl was designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1986 for the important collective, Memphis, which he had founded five years earlier.[1] The bowl is a wonderful example of the objects produced by Memphis, which have been held up as...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
January 29, 2020
Image features wallpaper showing a seated female figure holding a cupid-like figure, amidst swags and multicolored floral decoration on a blue ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Balancing Nature, and Cupid, too
This is an arabesque wallpaper design from the late eighteenth century, containing two alternating views. The top view shows a woman, possibly Venus, within an arbor seated on a cross frame stool, playfully bouncing a putto, perhaps Cupid, on her foot. A tall urn sits behind her. A tree grows off to the left, towering...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
January 28, 2020
Image features a charcoal and white gouache drawing showing an open market in a city square with canvas awnings strung over the stalls. A male figure is seated before an easel in the foreground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Hop Smith in Venice
Writer and illustrator Francis Hopkinson Smith did not publish his first work until he was almost 50 years old.  Trained as an engineer, he spent the first part of his career in construction and is credited with designing the foundation for the Statue of Liberty. He made charcoal drawings and watercolors throughout his life and...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Laura Fravel
Date
January 27, 2020
Image features: Length of heavy off-white cotton printed with a dense pattern of wedges and dots in light blue with dark shading. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this image.
Chips
In the aftermath of World War II, a number of textile producers attempted to revitalize the industry by enlisting recognized personalities in art and architecture to design screen prints. “Perhaps the most outstanding name collection is Stimulus Fabrics produced by Schiffer Prints,” Alvin Lustig wrote in American Fabrics Magazine in 1951. “There was not a...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
January 24, 2020