By Kaila Temple, Class of 2021 Looking at an advertisement for Community Plate flatware, you might recognize the pattern. Maybe it was the set of nice silverware your grandma brought out during the holidays, or perhaps you’ve seen it in antiques store. Either way, the silver plate flatware produced by the Oneida Company Ltd. [...]
By Molly Mapstone, Class of 2021 I had just left my job in the print room at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison and was missing being around the prints every day. I realized that I wanted to know more about the history of printmaking, print culture, and how prints are made. I [...]
By Christopher Malone, WPAMC Class of 2021 The shoemaker shop sign located in the Winterthur Museum’s Shop Lane is a great example of a late 18th- to early 19th-century trade sign which was easy to read from the street, used the traditional trope of the boot to signify shoemaker, and, according to paint analysis, [...]
By Peter Fedoryk, WPAMC Class of 2021 Sitting directly in front of Catharine, I know she isn’t looking at me. She’s looking over my shoulder, when she was being painted, at James. He (James Peale) was probably standing a little behind me and to my left. I can tell from the way her pupils [...]
By Cara Caputo, WPAMC Class of 2021 With its paper covers and imitation leather spine, this flask would have easily blended in with a shelf of books, but once removed, its true function as a flask would have been immediately evident. Displayed in Winterthur’s Albany Room, this flask is not meant to deceive visitors [...]
By Bethany McGlyn, WPAMC Class of 2020 My first days at Winterthur were a whirlwind of introductions, tours, names, and dates. While I began this program with some knowledge of American decorative arts, I quickly realized how much I had to learn. So, when it came time to pick my first object to research, [...]
By Joseph Litts, WPAMC Class of 2020 Winterthur is very lucky to have a copy of Mart Gartside’s An Essay on Light and Shade on Colors and Composition in General. Printed in London in 1805, Light and Shade is gorgeous and fascinating. As she describes in the opening pages, Mary Gartside was a drawing teacher, frequently frustrated [...]
By James Kelleher, WPAMC Class of 2020 Fortunately for all of us, buildings don’t melt into air after they’re well studied. They continue to leave an impression on those who encounter them. Sometimes the impressions are shrugged off and easily forgotten, like the corner store or boilerplate apartment complexes. Sometimes, though, a building is [...]
By Erin Anderson, WPAMC Class of 2020 One of the oldest desks in Winterthur’s collection is a beautiful walnut slant-front desk in the William and Mary style. Slant-front desks are essentially an evolution of older forms of furniture. Desk boxes, also called “Bible boxes” were semi-portable writing surfaces. These were followed by the desk [...]
By Olivia Armandroff, WPAMC Class of 2020 While he had grown up in a luxuriously appointed New York mansion and spent time in his family’s polished Newport home, the famed Breakers, Alfred Glynn Vanderbilt elected to make his first major real estate investment in 1901 in the more simply outfitted Great Camp Sagamore, a [...]