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This image features a view from the Brooklyn Academy of Music stage looking out at the theater’s great hall and balconies festooned with red, white, and blue streamers, bunting, and American flags. People in 19th attire meander along shopping for household wares and other goods. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Fair Ladies
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post highlights women designers in the collection. Author: Adrienne Meyer This lithograph is one of four in the Cooper Hewitt Design Library depicting scenes from the Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair of 1864.  These images capture some of the spectacle...
Sweet Peas
Mrs. Henrietta Maria Benson Homer exhibited Sweet Peas at the Brooklyn Art Association in April 1876, asking the relatively modest sum of $20 for the work.[1] In the same show, her son—Winslow Homer—also exhibited work.  Henrietta had taught her son the basics of drawing and painting, and helped to spark his interest in watercolor.  After...
Image features a young woman in a period gown descending a grand, curving staircase. Her left hand is resting on the bannister, and her right hand holds a cloak, dragging on the stairs. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Descending A Staircase
In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. In a prolific career spanning six decades, Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871—1954) illustrated more than two dozen books and produced hundreds of illustrations for newspapers and magazines.  From 1901 until 1924, she worked under exclusive contract to Harper’s...
Image features an unpublished title page design for the book, Occupations of Women and Their Compensation. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Priestess of Book Design
The career of Alice Cordelia Morse reflects the changing role of women in art and society in the late 19th century. Morse was able to achieve success in many artistic fields, designing book covers, illustrations, and stained glass, while also experimenting with other decorative media such as china painting and needlework. Although this title-page design was...
Image features a rock concert poster showing a face in profile, surrounded by pink, black, and grey streams of flowing, wavy hair. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Deliberately Disorienting
A pioneering example of psychedelic design, this work was one of the 56 posters that Wes Wilson produced between 1966 and 1968 for the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. The posters were commissioned by the rock concert promoter Bill Graham, who gave Wilson free rein over his designs until disputes about money severed their connection....
Image features gold toned metal brooch with red white and blue enamel and glass paste decoration depicting the great seal of the United States: a shield supported by a bald eagle, wings and legs outstretched, holding a scroll in its beak with the motto “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and grasping an olive branch in its right talon and a bundle of arrows in its left talon; above its head a scalloped blue circle with 6 glass pastes and gold toned surround. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Celebration of Unity, Sweetheart Jewelry from the World War II Era
This U.S. insignia brooch by Trifari dates back to 1945, and is made from gilded metal and glass. Wearing a pin designed after the country’s seal was an opportunity for women to express their patriotism, especially in 1945, a time marked by victory in Europe and Japan. This brooch is part of a wider trend...
Image features a woman standing next to a tree blooming with golden apples and a pond with a white swan. Holding a fruit in her hand, the woman is pictured from the side wearing a checked day dress, matching cape, and feather plumed hat. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Fashioning Desire
George Barbier’s Au Jardin des Hespérides (Garden of the Hesperides) appeared in 1913 in Gazette du Bon Ton. Translated as the “Journal for Good Taste,” it was intended for an elite readership concerned with high-society culture and entertainment, as well as the latest developments in fashion and beauty. The publication was led by the publishing...
Image features suit of necklace, brooch, earrings, bracelets and bodice ornament with sead pearl decoration in floral forms. Please scroll down to read th blog post about this object.
Pearls for the Bride, a Lasting Tradition
This set of seed pearl jewelry from the 1830s is referred to as a parure, essentially a matching suite of jewelry comprising interchangle pieces that expand the wearability of the set. A parure has three or more pieces: typically, a necklace, at least one pair of earrings, a brooch, bracelet, and in larger sets, a...
Image features squat round clear glass bottle encased in a gold-toned metal sleeve with six jingling bells around circumference; gold-toned flaring circular foot; removable circular gold-toned metal cap. Separate square, gold foil-covered presentation box and brown cardboard outer box. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Ting-A-Ling, the Perfume Bottle that Sings
This festive little perfume bottle embodies the creative genius of French couturier Lucien Lelong, active between 1919, when he opened his first couture house, and 1948, the year he retired. Lelong was influential in shaping the world of haute couture throughout much of the twentieth century. Among his contemporaries were Chanel, Worth, Patou, Lanvin and...
Image features iron with clear glass housing encasing blue emulsion-covered body, with glass handle and metal sole plate; plastic and metal control knob below handle; power cord at rear. Please scroll down read more about this object.
Iron, Meet Glass
To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published on July 26, 2015. The postwar design era focused largely on improving all aspects of life at home for those who had...
Image features button in the form of an open-topped wooden crate containing four pears in tones of yellow to pink, with two narrow green leaves interspersed among them. Pease scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Juicy Pears
In celebration of The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post takes a multisensory approach to an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. Jelly candies in the form of fruit? Toys for children? Miniatures? This whimsical and colorful object is actually a button made of celluloid plastic. In an open-topped crate, a...
An Electrifying Lady
With Halloween still fresh in everyone’s minds, this paper conjures up a scene reminiscent of “The Bride of Frankenstein.” A metallic silver background greets the eye as the color pallet continues to sparkle and stun the viewer with its combination of blacks, reds, and yellows. Over a single repeat is a depiction of a Femme...
Cooper Hewitt Short Stories: Best Friends
Two years ago, we launched a series of monthly blogs titled “Meet the Hewitts” in order to provide a social history of the Cooper Union Museum and its founders—sisters Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt—from 1859 to Sarah Hewitt’s death in 1930. We are supplementing that history with “Cooper Hewitt Short Stories,” brief observations about prominent figures...
Helen Who?? Her Life as an Industrial Designer (Part Two)
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Cooper Hewitt is dedicating select Object of the Day entries to the work of women designers in our collection. Helen Dryden (1883-1972) was born in Baltimore and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her early career was spent as an art teacher, costume designer and fashion...
This is an egg-shaped product package It was designed by Roger Ferriter and produced by L'eggs Products, Inc. and made for (as the client) Hanes Corp. and firm: Lubalin Smith Carnase. It is dated 1970s. Its medium is plastic, paper.
Which Came First: The Product or the Egg?
The plastic shine of the L’eggs egg pantyhose package is instantly recognizable to anybody who browsed grocery, drug, or convenience store shelves during the 1970s and ‘80s. First introduced in 1969, L’eggs brought women’s hosiery out of the specialty shop and to the mass market, providing women with an alternative to the frippery of garters...