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 pair of bags with a flap opening in the center. Black velveteen fronts, embroidered in a large-scale floral design in red with outlines in blue and green; inner and outer borders with a geometric design in yellow and off-white. Woven bands in indigo blue at top and bottom, embroidered with a scrolling design in two shades of red, ending in fringes in dark red, blue and black, wrapped with gold metallic yarns. Backing is red cotton with a discharge print in white of two paisleys, a star and cresent moon. Hanging loops at upper corners. Please scroll down to read the blog post about these objects.
Decorative Storage
In Kyrgyzstan, the nomadic past is evident in the quantity of collapsible, portable textile furnishings. Textile objects found in Kyrgyz homes include patchwork, embroidered, or appliquéd quilts, saddle bags, pot holders, rugs, clothing, room dividers, and in the case of yurts, tent flaps. These garments and housewares are often made as part of a bride’s...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
January 7, 2020
Image features an adjustable reclining rocking chair made of light brown, bent beechwood with woven cane back, seat, and foot rest, hinged to fold under seat. The chair sits on two ovals which serve as its arms and rockers. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Bending Form, Not Function
Adjustable and rockable, this reclining chair exemplifies the fusion of form and function. The chair was designed by the Udinese-based firm, Società Anonima Antonio Volpe, around 1905. The firm specialized in the production of bentwood furniture for the Italian market. This type of furniture had been made popular by the Viennese firm Gebrüder Thonet, which...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
January 6, 2020
Image features a wallpaper illustrating the tale of a Thousand and One Nights. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
These Walls are Telling Stories
This is an exquisitely printed wallpaper illustrating the Thousand and One Nights tale. The story is told through a series of five frames or portals, each of which alternates with a smaller frame which remains constant. Each of the scenes is printed in brilliant colors with an ombre sky that shades from orange to blue....
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
January 3, 2020
Image features a kitchen filled with dancing and singing pots, pans, and other kitchen tools and implements. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Up all Night with the Pots and Pans
What goes on in the kitchen late at night? This whimsical print imagines the pantry come to life, as its normally inanimate occupants enjoy a jolly party. Dishes and cutlery dance to a merry tune played by a band of jugs, mops, pots and pans. A suckling pig, a goose, and a cabbage-headed meat-figure lend...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Julia Siemon
Date
January 2, 2020
Image features a white curtain panel printed in blue with chinoiserie design. Two Asian-inspired figures climbing a fantasy stairway in mid-air, a figure pointing to the top of a hill where a pagoda-like structure sits. Oversized flowers, foliage, and rococo scrolls accent the landscape. Narrow rectangular panel with six tabs along top edge for hanging. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Inspired by Pillement
This textile’s whimsical chinoiserie scene was inspired by the work of French artist Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728 – 1808), and printed by Bromley Hall, a prominent textile printing manufactory in Middlesex, England. Pillement’s illustrations inspired many late-eighteenth-century textile designs. Although this design features many of the artist’s signature motifs – oversized flowers, a winding staircase and...
Read Time
1 minute
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
January 1, 2020
Image features the Desta Stahlmöbel book cover showing a photomontage of tubular steel club chairs on a yellow and light blue background. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Celebrating The Bauhaus at 100
The Bauhaus, a school of design and architecture founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 by Architect Walter Gropius, had the goal of developing unity of the arts through craftsmanship taught in specialized workshops by key theorists and practitioners, among them Johannes Itten, Marcel Breuer, Lázló Mology-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer, Josef Albers, and...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Stephen Van Dyk
Date
December 31, 2019
Image features tan wallpaper showing a pillar and arch design with a very deep perspective. Please scroll down to read the blog post this object.
Pillar of the Unknown
This is a pillar and arch paper, the format of which was introduced in England in the late eighteenth century. These papers consisted of a series of pillars and arches, with any variety of motifs used to occupy the space under the arch. The scale and repeat size was usually quite large so these designs...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
December 30, 2019
Image features th e poster “Centrale Bond 30.000 Transportarbeiders (Central Union 30,000 Transport Workers)”, showing a large figure composed of photomontage standing before two red figures with their backs to the viewer, all on yellow background; "CENTRALE BOND" in black in a curved line at top, the number 30,000 in white superimposed on the large figure, "TRANSPORTARBEIDERS"in black across the bottom. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Wisdom of Crowds
This rare poster was created in 1930 Paul Schuitema (Dutch, 1897–1968). The poster came to Cooper Hewitt in 2019 as a gift from Merrill C. Berman, one of the world’s most influential collectors of modern graphic design and a longtime collaborator with our museum. With this recent gift, Schuitema’s poster is coming home to Cooper...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Ellen Lupton
Date
December 27, 2019
Image features: Natural off white colored ground with vertical stripe pattern felted. Stripes have areas left natural with straight felted areas. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
SI Alpaca
SI Alpaca demonstrates Claudy Jongstra’s interests in combining sheerness and opacity in lightweight, translucent structures, and in reintroducing historic dye plants such as madder and weld to the Netherlands. Jongstra planted a research garden specifically devoted to dye plants, and has studied with dye masters to learn historic techniques. SI Alpaca is dyed with walnut....
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
December 26, 2019