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...

Author: Joanne Schmidt In celebration of the third annual New York Textile Month, members of the Textile Society of America will author Object of the Day for the month of September. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination...

Author: Jeffery McCullough Many surviving nineteenth-century crib quilts are evidence that it was more common to make a child-size quilt in colors and patterns that were popular for adult-size bed quilts, rather than in specific “baby” colors. An 1840-1860 crib quilt in the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum represents common coloration and a...

Neyret Freres, a French company that operates today, once specialized in the manufacture of woven silk pictures, official state ribbons and trademarked woven items for clothing manufacturers. The company, founded by M. Antoine Bizaillon, started as a small ribbon factory in 1825 in St. Etienne, France. He later sold the company to his nephew, Jean-Baptiste...

Puss in Boots, hero of the English fairy tale of the same name, is one of ten storybook characters in a boxed set of Jointed Storybook Animals.  These articulated paper dolls were created by Bess Bruce Cleaveland (1876-1966), a children’s illustrator whose books, postcards, teaching materials, and educational toys were popular in the 1910s-1930s.  The...