This sampler was worked by Mary Fitz (1807–1849) in 1819 at the Catherine Welshans Buchanan’s school in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. The central scene depicts two fashionably dressed women in a grape arbor, one standing and the other seated on a bench. The border is made up of compartmentalized motifs including a heart, baskets of grapes and...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do at Cooper-Hewitt? I manage the exhibition design process for all our exhibitions, including the designers who design our exhibitions, graphics, and lighting, and plan the schedules and budgets for how the exhibitions are built. What was your background before coming to Cooper-Hewitt?...
This family register sampler, with its melancholy verse about the fleeting nature of life, was stitched in 1833 by Abigail Barnard. Although such samplers were typically part of the needlework education of schoolgirls, Abigail created this example at the age of twenty-seven to document the birth, marriage, and death dates of her parents and siblings....
The Cooper-Hewitt Museum was founded in 1896. It was originally named Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration and it fell under the wing of theCooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1895, the granddaughters of Peter Cooper, Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt and Amy Hewitt Green, asked the Cooper Union...
The Cooper-Hewitt Museum was founded in 1896. It was originally named Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration and it fell under the wing of theCooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. In 1895, the granddaughters of Peter Cooper, Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt and Amy Hewitt Green, asked the Cooper Union...
Matches seem almost trivial to us in 2014. However, carrying matches was once a novelty and feat of man’s ability to harness instantaneous fire. Gas-powered lighters and safety matches in matchboxes were not available on a wide scale until the 1930s. Wooden friction matches were first invented about a hundred years earlier, but were fickle...
This holiday greeting was designed by Paula Scher, winner of the 2013 National Design Award for Communication Design. Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design for four decades. Iconic, smart, and accessible, her images are part of the American vernacular. Known for her reimagining of typography as a communicative medium, she has said,...
Can you explain a little bit about the type of work you do? I work in the exhibition department setting up the museum’s shows. I mat and frame all of the artwork for display and make custom book mounts. Sometimes I travel to set up Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibitions in other cities. What do you enjoy most...
As a component of Cooper-Hewitt’s renovation and expansion of the Carnegie Mansion galleries, the Museum’s collection of 217,000 objects has been moved to an off-site facility, which includes collections storage areas, an objects conservation lab, and a photography studio. This past month, the staff of Cooper-Hewitt rounded another major milestone of this multi-year, multi-faceted project...
