Cooper Hewitt Library

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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...
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...
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,...
Book, "A day at the New York World's Fair with Peter and Wendy"
1964: I was there…in my Orange and Blue
This post was originally published on April 22, 2014. The Cooper-Hewitt Library has a large collection of over 2,000 World’s fair catalogues and books. Some are children’s souvenirs and stories. A day at the New York World’s Fair with Peter and Wendy brings back memories of certain things I remember from visiting the world’s fair.....
This image features Arctic inspired water service that includes a serving tray, water pitcher, cups, ice bowl. Reed & Barton, artistic workers in silver & gold plate. 1884.
On a Hot Summer’s Night….Icy Cold Silver
Does the frozen scenery on this Reed & Barton beverage set make you feel like the ice water is really icy?   More refreshing? Are you transported to frostier climes in faraway places? Icebergs “startle, frighten, awe; they astonish, excite, amuse, delight and fascinate”[1].   Depending on where you live, icebergs and polar bears can be as...
Image features the Desta Stahlmöbel book cover showing a photomontage of tubular steel club chairs on a yellow and light blue background. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Celebrating The Bauhaus at 100
The Bauhaus, a school of design and architecture founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 by Architect Walter Gropius, had the goal of developing unity of the arts through craftsmanship taught in specialized workshops by key theorists and practitioners, among them Johannes Itten, Marcel Breuer, Lázló Mology-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, Oskar Schlemmer, Josef Albers, and...
Image features the decorative title page of Volume 1 and colored engraving of man's costume featuring a waistcoat. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Keeping a Watch on Waistcoats
Marie Antoinette and her entourage of costumers were obsessed with discovering the latest fashion trends in clothing, accessories and hairstyles. Despite the predominance and popularity of French fashion trends in the eighteenth century, the scarcity of printed fashion news and illustrations led to the publications of the first fashion plates in early British magazines for...
Image features page showing Cinderella in the garden picking onions and gathering beeswax from the beehives. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this illustration.
Cinderella Goes Batik
At the Cooper Hewitt Museum the study and teaching of design includes learning about the materials and techniques used in designing objects, textiles, and works on paper. The Cooper Hewitt Museum Library collection supports research into the study of design with books that demonstrate and document techniques and materials, the “how to” and “with what”...
Image features an ivory colored book cover featuring a pink rose on a leafy stem within a gold rectangle in the center. The word LANCÔME in gold capital letters below the gold rectangle. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
The Scent of French Elegance
In 1935, visionary fragrance pioneers Armand Petitjean and Guillaume d’Ornano opened a luxury boutique, selling a small selection of perfumes and beauty products, manufactured just outside of Paris.  This French perfume company was called Lancôme, its name inspired by the ruins of the castle Le Château de Lancosme near the region of La Brenne in the...