NEW RESEARCH

In addition to the Decorative Arts Trust’s support of scholarship through the Emerging Scholars Program, we eagerly promote the research, exhibitions, and projects undertaken by colleagues at museums around the country in our member magazine, The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust. We invite you to enjoy the online versions of magazine articles featured below.

See more stories about recent research in The Decorative Arts Trust Bulletin.

Optics and Enslavement in Charles Willson Peale’s Benjamin and Eleanor Laming

BY MICHAEL W. HARTMAN

A 1789 Maryland inventory recorded seven enslaved people—Beck and her children Juliet, Biddy, and Henry; Mary and her daughter Appolonia; and a man called Dick—as the property of Benjamin and Eleanor Laming, the subjects of a double portrait by Charles Willson Peale.

Nancy McClelland: Illuminating the Scope of Her Work Through the Lens of Electra Havemeyer Webb

BY MARGARET WOOD

Best known as an interior decorator and wallpaper historian, Nancy Vincent McClelland’s passion for wallpaper spanned decades. Throughout her nearly 60-year career, she studied, collected, produced, and used wallpapers in her practice.

Louise Brigham’s Box Furniture and the Long History of Democratic Design and Creative Reuse

BY JENA GILBERT-MERRILL

In 1909, a little-known artist and social reformer named Louise Brigham published Box Furniture: How to Make a Hundred Useful Articles for the Home, a collection of instructions for producing simple, modular furniture from repurposed wooden packing crates.

The Arts & Crafts Experiment of Rose Valley

BY SUE A. KEILBAUGH

In 1901, William Lightfoot Price brought together a group of prosperous Philadelphia free thinkers who enjoyed debating current philosophies of reform with the more informal company of his partners, friends, and relatives whose interests lay primarily in aesthetic matters. The consequence was the start of Price’s experimental utopian community based on the Arts & Crafts Movement.

A Place That I Think You’ll Like

BY JULIE SIGLIN

The story begins with a magnificent cherry tree. Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), an artist often considered the father of the Studio Furniture movement, was recently married and searching for a home in which to start his family. While exploring properties for sale in the Paoli, PA, area with his realtor, the agent said, “I’ll show you a place that I think you’ll like.”

American Classicism and Frederick Douglass’s Sculpture Collection

BY ELIZABETH S. HUMPHREY

Some of the sculptures contained in Douglass’s collection were Greco-Roman mythological figures such as Clytie, Mercury, and Psyche. However, Douglass’s ownership of a Diana of Versailles bust and a miniature version of The Greek Slave carry special significance.

The Follet Sampler at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

BY ALEXANDRA M. MACDONALD

Supported by a Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant, I was able to conduct research into the Follet sampler in the MESDA collection and at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. While my research is far from complete, I posit that all four members of the Follet family—Francis, Eliza, Mary, and Ann—are represented in this unique embroidery.