Western European Embroidery in the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum
Publication design: Roger Whitehouse
View ArticlePopular objects
Once a month the Digital & Emerging Media team will be reporting back on how objects in the collection circulate online.And here's our first missive.
View ArticleBuilding Movement
An interview with animator James Duesing.Susan Brown: The question I am most frequently asked as a curator is, “How long would it take to make something like that?” In trying to think of a contemporary...
View ArticleArabic Design Influence on the Island of Sicily
Sicily, island of sun, myth, and the omnipresent sea, has been the prized jewel in the crown of many invading empires. The Mediterranean Sea was the channel for the great trade routes between the East...
View ArticleFamily Registers and Family Legends
Considered a genteel accomplishment, needlework was an important component of female education in colonial and federal America. Family register samplers, such as this late 18th century example worked...
View ArticleA Pliable Plane
The granite and glass Ford Foundation Headquarters Building on East 42nd Street in Manhattan was designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates. Completed in 1967, the building is an icon of...
View ArticleBack in the USSR
This extremely rare trade catalog from 1940, in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum Library, represents the output of 10 state-owned ceramics factories from all over the Ukraine in small towns...
View ArticleHi-tech Embroidery
Embroidery has an unfairly old-fashioned image, probably because of the pious verses of the 19th century associating needlework with womanly virtue. So when we were developing the exhibition Extreme...
View ArticlePiña Camisa
This ornate and delicate nineteenth century blouse (camisa) from the Philippines made of piña cloth is a testament to the unique and rich textile traditions of this former Spanish colony. The use of...
View ArticleA Greek Embroidered Band
In 1953, Cooper-Hewitt received from Richard C. Greenleaf (1887–1961) a gift of twelve pieces of embroidery and lace. One piece was an unusual band made in the Greek Islands in the eighteenth century....
View ArticleDemocratized embroidery
The first pattern books documenting textile design motifs were published in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, and their proliferation into the nineteenth century allowed the wide...
View ArticleMonogram guides
The numbers, letters, and monograms taught and illustrated in manuals and pattern books were used by a wide variety of craftsmen, including engravers, wood carvers, painters, and embroiderers—as seen...
View ArticleStitched Samplers: Voices from the Past
What were you doing when you were twelve years old: riding bikes with friends, lip synching to your favorite band, watching bad TV shows, making cookies? I might have a hard time remembering exactly...
View ArticleThe “feet” of time?
Relatively little is known about this pair of men’s silk stockings. The donor of the stockings, Richard Greenleaf, identified them as being French and dating from the late eighteenth or early...
View ArticleA Little Nightcap
This embroidered nightcap represents a type of hat worn by English men beginning around 1550. It was appropriate for any time of day despite its name, and men wore it informally at home but not while...
View ArticleTeaching as Art: The Tapestry Art of Ann-Mari Kornerup
Tapestry weaver Ann-Mari Kornerup (1918-2006) frequently depicted scenes of everyday life. Many include children. Kornerup was born in Stockholm, Sweden and studied at the Swedish School of Textiles,...
View ArticleBuried in our Churchyard
Born in 1801 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Willamina Rine was twelve when she stitched this sampler at Mrs. Armstrong's school in 1813. The archives of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster reveal...
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