dining

SORT BY:
Image features a ceramic tea service composed of a hot water pot, sugar bowl, creamer, and cup and saucer. Each simple cylindrical vessel is decorated on one side with a colorful urban scene featuring a Soviet monument or state building in Leningrad. The opposite side of each piece is decorated with a gilded image of a historical site in Leningrad. The pieces are further embellished with classically-inspired gilded ribbons and marshal trophies at the edges, spouts, and loop handles. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this service.
An Early Eva Zeisel Design
In celebration of National Design Month, October’s Object of The Week posts honor past National Design Award winners. A version of this post was published on November 13, 2012. Eva Zeisel, a major figure in twentieth-century industrial design, won the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005. Although best known for her contributions to mid-century...
Image features: Tablecloth with square and rectangular compartments containing whimsical scenes inspired by Mughal and Persian miniature paintings and book illustrations. Scenes include seated musician on a carpet surrounded by flowering trees and swans, elephants with howdahs strapped to their backs, riders on horseback with parasols, and figures seated in elaborate garden pavilions. Primarily in shades of green, blue and pink. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Poetic Tablecloth
This colorful tablecloth was designed by Marion Dorn Kauffer, an accomplished twentieth-century designer primarily known for her textiles and carpets. Designing across different media, she also created wallpapers, illustrations, and graphics. The printed pattern that decorates this tablecloth features a series of square and rectangular vignettes inspired by Mughal painted miniatures from India. The vignettes...
Image features: Long narrow runner woven in shades of dark brown and off-white. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Brocade Nickel
Sandy Chilewich has popularized and boosted the reputation of extruded yarn manufacture, specifically in vinyl, which used to be reserved for more industrial applications. She took advantage of a fairly simple mechanical process involving relatively few steps to make much of the woven vinyl products that are part of her eponymous line. The extrusion process...
Image features a full-bellied cup with spiral ribbing, a simple loop handle, and a domed lid with a knob at the top in the form of an apple with leaves. The pot and lid are decorated with naturalistic looking flowers in shades of pink, red, blue, yellow and green, all on a white ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A French Porcelain Cup for “English Cream”
On July 14th, France and many other nations around the world celebrated French National Day, also known as Bastille Day. The date is the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, which took place in 1789, and marked a turning point in the French Revolution. These days, this national occasion is usually marked with parades,...
Image features a blue and white tablecloth with a central section containing eight blue rectangles, each with a single stylized floral element in white. Four squares with the same isolated floral motif are at each corner with rectangles between containing a dense arrangement of geometrical and floral elements. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Stylized Florals
Josef Zotti (b. Italy, active Vienna, 1882–1953), Austrian architect and furniture designer, collaborated with Herrburger und Rhomberg, one of the largest textile companies in Vorarlberg, Austria. The partnership began after the completion of his studies and extended until the 1930s. The earliest works were woven fabrics, particularly tablecloths, decorated with graphic motifs that were characteristic...
Image features silver portable flatware set of fork, spoon and knife with serpentine outline; flat curving handles leading to curved broad heads and knife blade; Knife handle with two slots to accept, the fork and spoon. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Travel and Eat in Style
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. Anne Krohn Graham is a painter, sculptor, and jeweler, who lives and works in Richland, Washington. Holder of a B.A. in Art Education, an M.A.in Art, and an M.F.A. in Art with an emphasis in metals, she...
Image features a four-tined silver dessert fork, its form suggesting a tulip on its sinuous, leaf-encased stem. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Tulip for the Table
This silver dessert fork from the “Tulip” pattern, was designed by Henrich Vogeler in 1898-99, and produced by the firm of M. H. Wilkens & Söhn  in Bremen, Germany. Vogeler’s Tulip pattern is one of the most graceful German flatware patterns of the Jugendstil period, and this particular piece shows the pattern well. Vogeler, trained as...
This image features two candelabra, featuring a standing female figure of patinated bronze supporting branched gilt-bronze candle arms, each arm in the form of a winged female figure; the branches are surmounted by a patinated putto/faun standing on a column and holding an urn-shaped bobeche; square gilt-bronze base with a scene of Europa and the bull; a patinated winged female term stands at each corner. The female figures stand on a gilt-bronze plinth. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Luxurious Lighting
Today’s Object of the Day is on view in Tablescapes: Designs for Dining (October 5, 2018–April 14, 2019). These two candelabra in the neoclassical style, with their detailed sculptural work and multiple candle branches, would have undoubtedly brought abundant golden light as well as a sense of luxury to any early 19th-century interior. They were...
Surtout de Table: Sustenance of Political Power
From Cooper Hewitt's collection handbook, Making Design, the history of the surtout de table.