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