To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition. This post was originally published on July 26, 2015. The postwar design era focused largely on improving all aspects of life at home for those who had...
In celebration of The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, this Object of the Day post takes a multisensory approach to an object in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection. Jelly candies in the form of fruit? Toys for children? Miniatures? This whimsical and colorful object is actually a button made of celluloid plastic. In an open-topped crate, a...
With Halloween still fresh in everyone’s minds, this paper conjures up a scene reminiscent of “The Bride of Frankenstein.” A metallic silver background greets the eye as the color pallet continues to sparkle and stun the viewer with its combination of blacks, reds, and yellows. Over a single repeat is a depiction of a Femme...
Two years ago, we launched a series of monthly blogs titled “Meet the Hewitts” in order to provide a social history of the Cooper Union Museum and its founders—sisters Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt—from 1859 to Sarah Hewitt’s death in 1930. We are supplementing that history with “Cooper Hewitt Short Stories,” brief observations about prominent figures...
In celebration of Women’s History Month, Cooper Hewitt is dedicating select Object of the Day entries to the work of women designers in our collection. Helen Dryden (1883-1972) was born in Baltimore and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her early career was spent as an art teacher, costume designer and fashion...
The plastic shine of the L’eggs egg pantyhose package is instantly recognizable to anybody who browsed grocery, drug, or convenience store shelves during the 1970s and ‘80s. First introduced in 1969, L’eggs brought women’s hosiery out of the specialty shop and to the mass market, providing women with an alternative to the frippery of garters...
The postwar design era focused largely on improving all aspects of life at home for those who had maintained it during the war and those who were just returning. The remodeled electric iron was one among many postwar innovations, but this Silver Streak iron in particular epitomizes the design period. The Silver Streak’s aerodynamic form...
In the early 1890s science teacher Emily Healey was working in her laboratory in Washington D.C. when she accidently dropped a certain uranium salt into some heavy oil. When she fired this compound onto a scrap of china, the effect was a brilliantly colored surface. Many experiments with the uranium followed and Emily determined that...
Landers Frary & Clark was one of the first American companies to manufacture electrical home appliances: in 1908 they introduced an electric coffee percolator and 1912 saw the release of an electric iron. These new products added to the company’s line of household products that they had marketed since the 1890s under the trade name...
