This Object of the Day  celebrates one of many treasured objects given by Clare and Eugene V. Thaw to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.  It is republished here in memory of Eugene V. Thaw. Click on this link to read more about the Thaws and their gifts to Cooper Hewitt.    This charming gothic interior was the...

Caitlin Condell discusses this Russian movie poster that utilizes themes of modernity, Constructivism, urban imagery, and the avant-garde found in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.

This distinctive, fully reversible shawl border was handwoven in Russia in the early nineteenth century to be part of a Kashmir-style shawl. It was woven such that the intricate floral design is identical on both sides of the fabric. Kashmir shawls were essential fashion accessories for stylish women of means in nineteenth-century Europe. Initially imported...

In 1918, amidst raging civil war and biting famine, Russia’s fledgling communist government was determined to communicate its values to a massive, largely illiterate and rural public.  It found one of many vehicles in an equally massive propaganda campaign. The government mobilized artists from across Russia to create images in a vast array of media....