about

The Object of the Week blog is written by Cooper Hewitt’s curators, graduate fellows, and contributing researchers and scholars. Posts are published every week and present research on an object from the museum’s collection. With over 210,000 objects spanning thirty centuries of decorative arts and design, Object of the Week explores the material culture of textiles, graphic design, furniture, products, architectural drawings, wallcoverings, and much more.

Image features: Printed length in a design of uneven vertical stripes with overlapping small oval leaf or bead shapes in strong reds, orange, blue, mauve and yellow. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this image.
Althea McNish: An Exceptional Talent
As part of the African-Caribbean diaspora of the mid-twentieth century, textile designer Althea McNish had a lasting impact on British design over the course of her career . Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, she studied painting and worked as a cartographer and illustrator for the British government there. [1] In 1951, she and her mother left the island to...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
August 24, 2020
Image features a lighting catalogue page showing hanging lamps with large glass shades in various shapes and colors, all on a black background. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Uplighting, Deco Style
A version of this post was originally published on June 2, 2016. Two rare Art Deco period catalogues in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Design Library include illustrations with accompanying specifications and prices for more than 100 glass lighting fixtures manufactured in about 1930, by Meissner Glasraffinerie of Dresden, Germany. The factory was located...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Stephen Van Dyk
Date
August 17, 2020
Image features a low table consisting of a triangular top on two angled, panel-form legs tapering to small feet, the entire form covered in dark brown patinated copper. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Designed for the Wright Price
Clad in copper, this odd, angular table was designed by the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It was part of a suite of furniture and built-in features Wright created in 1956 for Price Tower, a skyscraper the architect built in the small town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.[1] The building was commissioned by Harold C. Price to...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
August 10, 2020
Image features a rectangular panel of wallpaper showing stylized branches and foliage interspersed with cubist motifs printed in green, black, burgundy, tan, yellow, gray and metallic gold on mottled tan ground. The paper is embossed with very fine horizontal wavy lines. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Charles Burchfield’s Modern Wallpaper
This post was originally published on June 1, 2016. Charles Burchfield is one of the best known American watercolorists of the twentieth century, painting urban street scenes as well as more rural landscapes in a rather sullen fashion. It is less well known that he designed wallpaper, working for the M. H. Birge and Sons...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
August 3, 2020
Image features: Dense configuration of dark brown lines has overlapping yellow and red lines creating rectangular groupings on a white ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Glen Plaid
“One of the most promising newcomers in the highly competitive field of fabric design is a youthful, multi-talented New Yorker, Joel Robinson,” Ebony magazine proclaimed in 1952.[1] Robinson’s printed fabric Ovals had been shown that winter in The Museum of Modern Art’s 1951 Good Design exhibition, making him the first African American to be included...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
July 27, 2020
Image features the cream-colored cover of the 1929 UAM catalog, showing the capital letters UAM in black and cream-white, aligned vertically and horizontally and superimposed on a large red circle. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Modernism Evolving
The UAM Catalogue is one of many period resources in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library that chronicle French Art Deco and the shift into modernism in the twentieth century. The UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes) was founded in May, 1929, by a group of French designers, decorators, and architects, led by Robert Mallet-Stevens, who were...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Elizabeth Broman
Date
July 20, 2020
Image features a white-enameled beehive-shaped hanging lamp divided into five horizontal segments by perforated brass bands. The lamp hangs from a white cord at center top. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Aura of Light
“A lamp… [is] always part of an environment…. When working on… public building[s], I noticed that such furnishings and appliances were necessary to create the right unity, and then I designed them. The fact that later on they can also fit in another environment is another story.”[1] Lighting had become a significant part of Alvar...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Cynthia Trope
Date
July 13, 2020
Image features a drawing of an altar in a neoclassical style, with architectural plan. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A Surprise Victory for Robert Mylne
On September 23rd, 1758, an aspiring architect named Robert Mylne (1733 – 1811) wrote to his younger brother William (1734 – 1790) with astonishing news. At twenty-four years old, Robert had just become the first Briton awarded top prize in the Concorso Clementino, a famous architecture competition held every three years in Rome.[1] This drawing...
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Julia Siemon
Date
July 6, 2020
Image features a wallpaper panel showing yearbook portraits of teenage boys displayed in decorative oval frames surrounded by flowers on a bright rainbow-colored ground printed in fluorescent ink and black rayon flock. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Framing The Bullies
In celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, June Object of the Week posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection.  Bright-faced youths peer back at you from a vibrant web of floral foliage. But this wallpaper, titled Bullies, strikes a scornful tone. Multi-disciplinary artist Virgil Marti sourced the portraits seen in the wallpaper from his...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Matthew Kennedy
Date
June 29, 2020