Read Summer 2026 Magazine Articles Online

Enjoy these articles from the Summer 2026 issue of The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, which included a special Semiquincentannial section dedicated to exhibitions in the Philadelphia region focused on the Revolutionary era. Although the printed magazine is only sent to our members, these online versions are now available on our website:

• “A Nation of Artists: 250 Years of Creativity” by Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley
• “Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia” by David L. Barquist and Colin Fanning
• “Window to Revolution: Pennsylvania Germans and the War for Independence” by Lisa Minardi, Emily Sneff, Christopher Malone, and Sarah Bowen
• “Seeking Profit and Power: Philadelphia, China Trade, and the Making of America” by Peter Seibert
• “Challenging Masterpieces: Art and Identity in American Furniture” by Josh Lane
• “Radical Americana: 45 Artists and 25 Philadelphia-area Sites Celebrate the Semiquincentennial” by Jennifer Zwilling
• “The Politics of Taste: The Presidential Houses of Virginia and Washington” by Amy Hudson Henderson
• “The Work of the Edinburgh Upholstery Company at Hopetoun House” by Stephen Jackson
• “Philip Trammel Shutze: Atlanta’s Consummate Collector” by Michael Rose
• “Novel Nature: How a Maritime Byproduct Defined the Elite 17th-Century Interior” by Lauryn Smith

One of our most popular membership benefits, The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust is mailed in the summer and in the winter. If you would like a print copy, we invite you to become a member of the Trust today.

Pictured: The magazine cover shows a rare pickle stand featured in A Nation of Artists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris founded the American China Manufactory in Philadelphia in 1770. Designed to serve pickled nuts and fruits during the dessert course of a meal, this small stand is made of more than 72 elements individually formed from a refined white clay called kaolin. The shells were molded from actual shells. Once assembled, the stand was then decorated with cobalt blue ornament, covered with a clear lead glaze, and fired at a high temperature. Bonnin and Morris’s ability to make soft-paste porcelain provided direct evidence that Americans could prosper without the assistance of Great Britain and its mercantile system, emboldening leaders such as Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush. (American China Manufactory, Pickle Stand, 1770–72, Philadelphia. Soft-paste porcelain with underglaze blue decoration. 5 1/8 × 7 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of a 7th-generation Philadelphian, 2014-166-1. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)