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 the cover of the book, Gran Baile de Calaveras, un Libro Túnel, a yellow, orange, and green rectangular frame surrounding an image of a gathering of skeletons in brightly hued clothing dancing, socializing, and celebrating. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Celebrating The Day of the Dead
The Day of the Dead is celebrated in the publication, Gran Baile de Calaveras, un Libro Túnel [The Dancing Skeletons Tunnel Book], by Joan Sommers, a work in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library. The book is a concertina-like folding form, composed of five separate scenes, each on a different panel. When viewed through the...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Erica Schaumberg
Date
October 31, 2019
Image features a blue wallpaper with design of white skeletons each assuming a different pose. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Perky Little Skeletons
Perfect for the Halloween season is this wallpaper aptly titled “Skeletons”. The pattern is composed of skeletons each assuming a different wacky pose. There are nine different poses in total, forming a neat grid, but the designer’s skill in placing the motifs creates a nice overall flow which appears to contain an unlimited variety of...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
October 30, 2019
From Painting to Print
Author: Virginia Pollock The founding of Pennsylvania and the formation of William Penn’s “greene country towne” of Philadelphia is immortalized in this textile, intended for use as a furnishing fabric. Whereas today Penn’s dealings might be seen as part of a larger narrative of harmful and exploitative colonization, the printed images seek to convey Penn...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
October 29, 2019
Image features leather covered folding camera with front panel enameled in red, brown and tan geometric pattern. Rectangular black-lacquerd cedar box with same geometric design as on camera holds the folded camera. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Camera in a Box
Walter Dorwin Teague was a well-established industrial designer by 1928, when the Eastman Kodak Company, engaged him to modernize their line of cameras. Kodak sought Teague based on recommendations by curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having no prior experience in camera design, Teague undertook the assignment after Kodak agreed that he could spend...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Cynthia Trope
Date
October 28, 2019
Image features a striped curtain paper with tie backs. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Exploring Curtain Papers
I recently had the opportunity to look at the museum’s collection of curtain papers, a lesser known group in the Wallcoverings department. A visiting paper conservator from the UK’s National Trust was researching curtain papers and while in New York on a courier trip stopped by to see Cooper Hewitt’s examples. Not much is known...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
October 25, 2019
Image features a drawing, a self-portrait of the artist, collar open, holding a book in his right hand. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Ye Ghost
  An influential painter, writer, and teacher, Kenyon Cox was perhaps best known for his murals that decorate state capitols and courthouses across the United States. The collection at Cooper Hewitt includes hundreds of his drawings, including six sketchbooks from his time as an art student—first in Ohio and then traveling to Paris—offering valuable insights...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Laura Fravel
Date
October 24, 2019
Image features a woven textile with a charcoal gray ground and a pattern of fragmented color wheels, made up of small squares of greens, gray-blues, browns, pinks, and off-whites. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Colorwheel
Since 2006, Hella Jongerius has been working with Swiss furniture producer Vitra, conducting an intensive study of the colors and textures of the materials used in the company’s products, from textiles and leathers to plastics and woods. Her research was intended to help the company’s designers and clients make the best possible use of color...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
October 23, 2019
Image features a cantilevered chair of ribbon-like form, made of natural brown laminated plywood; the front feet slightly raised. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Sinuous Seat
Probably best known for his one-piece injection-molded plastic design, the Panton ‘S’ chair of 1960, designer Verner Panton was sketching ideas for one-piece, self-supporting, cantilevered stackable chairs made of a single material as early as 1955. Panton’s 275 S chair is the first one-piece cantilevered chair made of molded plywood. It was among his entries in the 1956...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Cynthia Trope
Date
October 22, 2019
Image features a wallpaper with cameos of General Nathanael Greene and a battle scene, printed in shades of gray. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Remembering Major General Nathanael Greene
This wallpaper honoring Major General Nathanael Greene is designed in the arabesque style, a format very popular in France at the end of the eighteenth century. Inspired by the mosaics and painted murals discovered at the recently unearthed Herculaneum and Pompeii, the designs are delicately balanced along a central axis. General Greene, spelled Green on...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
October 21, 2019
Image features yellow file folder with loose sketch in black ink of the basic form of a garden with pathways. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Swirl of Nooks for Contemplation
In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners. Completed in 2013, Monk’s Garden is a small garden on the grounds of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates took their inspiration for the garden’s...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Caitlin Condell
Date
October 18, 2019
Image features: Handwoven fringed rug or length with vertical stripes in dark yellow, blue and red. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Color Harmony
In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners. In 1959 Louis Kahn was commissioned to design a new building for the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York. The congregation had met for many years in a building of...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Matilda McQuaid
Date
October 17, 2019
Image features camera of rectangular form, the housing of red anodized aluminum, one end with a recessed circular lens surrounded by black plastic with small “Lytro” logo, the other end, covered in textured black silicone rubber, with an LCD touchscreen. Recessed shutter release button and controls on top of camera; USB port and power button on bottom; lanyard hole on side. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Refocus
In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners. A version of this post was originally published on October 1, 2014. Throughout the history of photography, advances in technology—from daguerreotype to digital photography—have continued to propel the field forward. Recently, the...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Andrea Lipps
Date
October 16, 2019
Image features a wallpaper design of scrolling cast iron work, printed in orange on a red ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Wallpaper Stronghold
In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners. Citadel is among the early wallpaper designs Jack Lenor Larsen created for Karl Mann. This is a striking, intense pattern that needs to be viewed up close or zoomed in on...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
October 15, 2019
Jennifer Morla: Experimental Typography
In celebration of the milestone 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards, this week’s Object of The Day posts honor National Design Award winners. What does “typography” mean to you? Does the word stir up contempt for Comic Sans and Papyrus, or does it conjure a death match between Times New Roman and Helvetica? For...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Ellen Lupton
Date
October 14, 2019
Image features a textile band with a lattice pattern having a cross in each diamond-shaped field. The lattice and crosses are white outlined with red, on a brown ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Blended Colonial Aesthetic
In recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15, 2019), this week’s Object Of The Day posts celebrate Latinx design and designers’ works in the collection. This rather ordinary looking band is actually extraordinary. Made in Mexico during the Spanish colonial period (likely mid-15th- early 16th c.) it is composed with a Spanish aesthetic,...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Date
October 11, 2019