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.
A Rare Glimpse into Two Masters’ Lives: Exploring the Charles and Ray Eames House
BY RACHEL POOL
Charles and Ray Eames’s Case Study House #8 in Pacific Palisades, CA, is an example of modern American architecture in its most functional form.
A Chamber Pot in New Orleans: Spanish Majolica and the Early Creole City
BY CHRISTOPHER GRANT
Excavations at the site of the former Tremé plantation in New Orleans are turning up rare and notable artifacts from the city’s Spanish past, including a blue-green bacín, the majolica vessel type affectionately known as the “Spanish chamber pot.”
A Tale of Two Families: An Engraved Tea Service in Antebellum Georgia
BY KAYLI RIDEOUT
Studying a 19th-century silver tea service from Augusta, GA, bearing the mark of “Clark & Co.” in the MESDA collection further encouraged my exploration in Southern identity studies through material culture.
The Folded Spaces of Two Pueblan Colonial Desks
BY CELIA RODRIGUEZ TEJUCA
I embarked on a trip to Puebla, Mexico, to complete my research on a pair of 18th-century desks and bookcases that reinforce the aesthetic connections between East Asia and the Spanish-American viceroyalties during the colonial period.
Recovering Rocaille: Tracing Stylistic Imbrication in 18th-Century French Ornament Prints
BY ASHLEY BOULDEN
I examined and documented a wide body of prints and drawings that anchor my investigation of the circulation of ornament in 18th-century at the Morgan Library and the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, as well as the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal, Canada.
Mid-Century Textiles and Global Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art
BY VISHAL KHANDELWAL
For the last leg of my dissertation research on mid-20th-century industrial design in India, I analyzed collections at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, keen to understand how the renowned textile innovator Marianne Strengell’s teaching at Cranbrook informed the work of design students Helena Perheentupa from Finland and Nelly Sethna (née Mehta) from India.
Portraiture and Meaning: Studying 18th- and 19th-Century Painting at the Smithsonian
BY PATRICK JACKSON
My research at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) centered around a portrait of the Onondaga Iroquois chief Ossahinta by the Syracuse, NY, painter Sanford Thayer.
Ceramics and the Environment in the Late-Twentieth-Century American West
EMERGING SCHOLARS > SUMMER RESEARCH GRANTS by Matthew Limb, PhD. Candidate, University of California, Santa Barbara In the summer of 1974, Studio...
Harriet Joor: Artist of Newcomb Pottery and Designer of the Arts and Crafts Movement
During nearly 50 years of operations, perhaps no other designer would come to more fully embody the aims of Newcomb Pottery than Harriet Coulter Joor (1875–1965). A talented and influential artist during her Newcomb years, Joor eventually established a successful independent career as an art instructor, professor, and freelance designer of ceramics and home furnishing textiles.
Buying and Selling Philadelphia: The Story of the Legendary 1929 Reifsnyder Sale
BY EMELIE GEVALT
In the spring of 1929, just months before the stock market crash that would plunge the country into the Great Depression, the American antiques market surged to an astonishing peak with the sale of the Howard Reifsnyder collection.