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 a rectangular four-panel folding screen decorated with a large, bright orange abstracted flame-like design against a tan ground; a wide blue, and narrow green band surround the perimeter of the screen. The reverse decorated by four green spirals, one on each panel. All four panels connected with striped orange border on tan ground. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Art into Life. A Life into Art.
Flowing forms of bright orange spread upwards, flickering across the four panels of this folding screen. The work, Fire-Orange, is one of a series of folding screens the American artist Jack Youngerman made beginning in 1978. Fire-Orange exemplifies how Youngerman, who passed away on February 19th at the age of 93, thoughtfully and creatively explored the nature and boundaries...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
April 13, 2020
Image features brown paper bag, printed with representation of a wood-framed chair.
The Chieftain Chair Goes Shopping
This mid-twentieth century shopping bag celebrates an icon of Danish Modern furniture design. The bag, created in 1949 by Mike Romer and Ida Fabricius, is embellished with a boldly rendered illustration of the Chieftain chair (Høvdingestolen), designed in that same year by Danish architect and furniture designer Finn Juhl. With its dramatically curved leather upholstery...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
poolr
Date
April 6, 2020
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...
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Elizabeth Broman
Date
March 30, 2020
Image features a multi-colored ombre of vertical columns of purples, grays and yellows bleeding into one another extremely gradually. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Sky Is Darkening Like a Stain
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. Does capturing the malevolent and mysterious quality of Rodarte’s fashions in contract fabrics sound like the impossible brief? Then extra credit is due to this collaboration among former National Design Award winners Rodarte...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Susan Brown
Date
March 23, 2020
Image features a small circular box and lid with printed abstract geometric decoration in olive green, yellow, red and black; the words "ODESSA” (in red), “FOOD. TRUST (in black)" printed on the side of the lid, in English. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Design
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. In the tumultuous years following the 1917 Russian Revolution, a vibrant flourishing of avant-garde art emerged. Artists and designers embraced the most utopian hopes of the revolutionary spirit. They searched for new aesthetic...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Devon Zimmerman
Date
March 16, 2020
Image features an angelic figure facing frontally, in red-orange robe. Head indicated only through graphite sketch. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Anonymous was a Woman
Throughout March, Object of the Week celebrates Women’s History Month. Each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. This unfinished angelic figure was likely a design for stained glass. Louise Howland King Cox designed windows for Louis Comfort Tiffany in the 1890s. However, there are few extant records about her work...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Laura Fravel
Date
March 9, 2020
Image features a wallpaper illustrating the history of the locomotive, in a repeat of scattered drawings of locomotives and railway trains in orange, gray, and yellow, accompanied by the dates 1830, 1870, and 1935. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Train History on the Wall
Welcome to the Object of the Week blog. This March, in celebration of Women’s History Month, each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. This wallpaper called Transportation traces the history of the railroad from 1830 to about 1938. The designer, Mary Louise Leake, was inspired to create this design after...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
March 2, 2020
Image features the cover of the 1905 Yamanaka & Co. furnishings trade catalogue covered in green and gold silk brocade and bound on the left with gold silk threads. A vertical rectangular white paper panel with Japanese characters is in the center of the cover. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Japonisme à l’extrème
  This 1905 furniture trade catalog in the  Cooper Hewitt Design Library  is from the renowned Japanese art and antiques firm of Yamanaka & Co. Covered in silk brocade and bound with silk threads according to the ancient Japanese bookbinding technique of Yotsume Toji or stab-binding, it contains 36 photographic plates of elaborately carved, gilded,...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Adrienne Meyer
Date
February 28, 2020
Image shows a dado panel containing a dense, lush flower bed. Please scroll down for additional information on this piece.
Always Summer in the Winter Garden
For the past couple days, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a French scholar doing research on the Parisian wallpaper manufacturer Jules Desfosse and later, Desfosse & Karth. We went through the museum holdings of wallpapers by this design firm and saw some really beautiful pieces. Jardin d’Hiver stands out as one of the...
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Gregory Herringshaw
Date
February 27, 2020