In celebration of National Design Month, October’s Object of The Week posts honor past National Design Award winners. A version of this post was published on November 13, 2012. Eva Zeisel, a major figure in twentieth-century industrial design, won the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005. Although best known for her contributions to mid-century...

In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. Today’s blog post was written by Adriane Dalton and originally published on September 17, 2013. Born in 1877, Jutta Sika was an Austrian designer working in a variety of different media. Sika received formal training in both...

This verrière defines the classification of objects we call decorative arts: something that is both beautiful and functional. The function of the verrière is to cool wine glasses by inverting them and resting the feet and stems on the curved rim of the vessel, with the bowls immersed in cold water or ice. This type...

This extraordinary chalice takes its inspiration from dragon-stem goblets made by the legendary Venetian glassworkers in the seventeenth century. In this example, also made in Venice but in the late nineteenth century by Salviati & Company, the dragons have been elevated to the body of the cup. Several remarkable glassworking techniques are on display in this object....

The Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870-1933) designed a set of drinking glasses in 1931 to be shown at the Exhibition of Interiors in Cologne.  His intention was to display to the public how an updated table setting should look.  Loos, who was known to have a simplified, rectangular and rectilinear design aesthetic chose the well-known...

On January 16, 1919, the congress of the United States of America ratified the 18th amendment, prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.[i]”  And so, after years of fervent lobbying by groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the U.S. entered a short-lived period in which alcohol was forbidden (but still widely...

The decoration of this coffee pot, with its solid ground of cobalt blue, is of a type known as “bleu persan”, after a style of Persian ceramics imported to Europe in the late seventeenth century. Cobalt is one of the few compounds capable of withstanding high kiln temperatures, and consequently is the ideal medium for...

The World’s Fair of 1964-65 was the third major international exhibition to be held in New York City. The Fair was held in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the same site as the 1939-40 World’s Fair. The theme of the Fair was “Peace Through Understanding”, and it was dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking...

This flask is not the kind you use to sneak liquor into your family get-togethers. At 7.5 inches tall, this Swiss flask is much larger than the flask you might be used to, and it is earthenware. This glazed ceramic object from the eighteenth century mimics a book. The attention to detail is especially apparent...