Living (and Learning) in a Material World

Posted on May 24, 2012
By Shoshana Resnikoff

What does a diploma have in common with an 18th-century tankard? Winterthur’s graduate programs, that’s what!

Winterthur hosts two graduate programs in partnership with the University of Delaware—the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (WPAMC) and the Winterthur-University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC).

This year marks the 60th anniversary of graduate programs at the museum, and to commemorate the programs and their supporters, we’re hosting an exhibition! Titled A Lasting Legacy: Sixty Years of Winterthur Graduate Programs, the show will illustrate how the academic programs at Winterthur have impacted the greater museum world. A Lasting Legacy opens on Friday, May 25, but here is a sneak peek of two of the objects that will be featured.

Henry Francis du Pont's honorary doctorate from the University of Delaware

When the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (originally known as the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture or WPEAC) was founded in 1952, Henry Francis du Pont predicted how influential the program would become. To honor him and his efforts to promote the study of history and material culture, the University of Delaware awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws in 1954. Du Pont received this degree alongside the first small group of WPEAC graduates, who were awarded masters of arts degrees.

Tankard, c. 1710, marked by Jacob Boelen, New York, silver; gift of Charles K. Davis, 1957.94

Collectors build their collections on the belief that the objects they are purchasing are genuine. But what do they do if they find out that some of them are fake? One New York antiques collector amassed what he thought was a significant collection of early American silver. Long after his death, his descendants had the silver assessed. Using an analytical technique called XRF (energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy)—a method first used to examine art objects by Winterthur in 1970—the purity of the silver alloy and its age could be determined. From this analysis, it was discovered that most of the collection was constructed from modern silver! Many of these objects have been loaned to Winterthur as teaching tools for the WUDPAC students, who use them to learn scientific techniques for identifying fraudulent pieces. The object pictured above is a real early American tankard made by silversmith Jacob Boelen. Visit A Lasting Legacy to see the object side by side with its fake and see if you can tell the difference.

These are just two of the interesting objects in A Lasting Legacy: Sixty Years of Winterthur Graduate Programs, on view from May 25 to June 16, 2013 in the Winterthur Galleries. Visit the exhibition to hear more of the stories gathered over 60 years of training museum professionals.

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Investigating Overlooked Art Forms

Posted on May 16, 2012

Throughout the year, Winterthur hosts a number of talented and engaged academics from museums and research institutions around the world. They apply for our research fellowships and come here to work with our extensive collections.

In 2011 we experienced a surprising moment of synchronicity. Two research fellows explored very different topics, but they came together in their mission: to reconsider 19th-century commercial art forms from the perspective of art history and social history. They worked with diverse materials but covered intersecting themes, making for an exciting time in the Research Building!

Research Fellow Anna Dempsey hard at work in the Winterthur Library.

Anna M. Dempsey is an associate professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. She was with us from the autumn of 2010 through the winter of 2011 as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. The NEH has consistently supported the Research Fellowship Program by funding research stays for advanced scholars, who become great sources of inspiration and information to our master’s and Ph.D. candidates. We are very grateful for NEH support.

Anna’s project was “Working Women Artists: Images of Domesticity and the Construction of American Modernism, 1880–1930.” Anna, who has continued to work on this project since her return to Massachusetts, feels that while it is important to acknowledge women’s contributions to fine art, we should also be investigating their successful involvement in other kinds of visual production, including commercial illustration, photography, and wood engraving.

Anna examined artists such as Edna Cooke Shoemaker. Shoemaker did illustrations like this one for children's books, textbooks, and magazines. Edna Cooke Shoemaker drawings and papers, Downs Collection, Col. 827, 827.27.5.

Anna is interested in the shared visual language of fine and commercial art. By looking at a number of images, including those that feature women, children, and scenes of domesticity, she is exploring ideas conveyed by the images that relate to or even contradict the written words connected to the images. Ultimately, she wants to understand how women artists thought about, used, and shared these images to articulate and disseminate their ideas of gender. Their work and their communities, Anna argues, shaped modern visuals, which in turn shaped modern perceptions.

In the Winterthur Library, Anna accessed collections of photographs, printed ephemera, and book illustrations, excited to study the papers of women who produced or taught art. She was also happily surprised by the strength of our secondary source and rare book collections, using them to give her research a strong grounding in theory.

On February 9, Anna led a lunchtime symposium for Winterthur graduate students and other scholars. Using period representations of women, many of which were produced by women themselves, she asked us all to consider what the figures in the pictures were portraying about their identities. What were we, the viewers, led to think about them? It was a mind-opening and provocative discussion. Anna has continued to work on this project, and we look forward to hearing more from her as it develops even further.

Chris Oliver with David Roselle, the director of Winterthur.

Chris Oliver, another research fellow, brought contributions to the lunchtime discussion that illuminated his own explorations into another 19th-century art form. Agreeing with Anna, Chris argues in his work that art historical studies might have missed an important and successful art form: the panorama.

Chris is working on his Ph.D. dissertation for the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Titled “Civic Visions: The Panorama and Popular Amusement in American Art and Society, 1845–1870,” his dissertation studies moving panoramas. Panoramas were large and extensive art works that were displayed for audiences in theatre-like settings, passing before viewers on a system of rollers. As the picture moved and the narrative developed, a speaker commented on the passing scenes, often inserting a moral or ideological point. Music sometimes completed this spectacle, and through panorama presentations, art became a part of mass culture.

This advertisement for the Hudson River Panorama was a library object that caught Chris' attention. While advertisements for panoramas were common in the 19th century, this one includes a description and even an illustration of the panorama!

Panoramas were very popular for about a quarter of a century before falling quickly out of fashion and disappearing from public and private collections. Chris’s research is reviving our knowledge of panoramas and their importance in forming public perceptions of a geographically extensive and politically contested nation. Chris found some crucial sources in the Winterthur Library, including the pamphlets that panorama viewers purchased as souvenir and guidebooks. He wrote, “Some highly useful primary sources were a host of printed pamphlets in the rare book collection. From John Banvard’s Description of Banvard’s Holy Land to E. P. Belden’s New York: Past, Present, Future (and with many sources in between) the content of these cheap publications that were distributed to arouse interest in specific amusements demonstrated an intrinsic link between tourism and contemporary entertainment.”

For the viewers, panoramas challenged and expanded some typical perceptions of their country’s landscape. For example, Chris studies the impact of anti-slavery panoramas, shown in both the U.S. and England in the 1850s. These presentations surprised viewers with their brutal honesty and cut through the stereotypical vision, accepted at the time, of slaves as contented workers stewarding fertile acreage for the sake of commercially successful agriculture. Like the panoramas themselves, Chris’s research will continue to surprise scholars and open their eyes to the potential of studying commercial art.

The Winterthur Research Fellowship is only one step of many in the fellows’ academic or museum careers, but we hope it is productive, enjoyable, and memorable. We at Winterthur are always honored and pleased to see what these scholars uncover in our collections.

Rosemary Krill works with students in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, researchers in the Research Fellowship Program, and the staff of Winterthur’s scholarly journal Winterthur Portfolio.
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The McAllister Perspective Glass: A Lens on 19th-Century Optical Entertainments

Posted on May 8, 2012
Editor’s note: this is the third of several posts by graduate students in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (WPAMC), written as part of their Material Life in America class. Please note that you can click on the images to see larger versions of them.

An unusual perspective glass at Winterthur. I think the double lenses make it look like a face with a startled expression. Can you see it? (1958.1760)

 Have you ever squinted at a Magic Eye picture, donned 3-D glasses at the movie theater, or peered through a View-Master to discover stereoscopic scenes of far-off places? If so, you may have been delighted and amazed at the special effects they produced. However, popular entertainments using optical effects are far from a modern-day phenomenon. In fact, such amusements have been around since at least the 1600s.

An unusual example from Winterthur’s collections offers a view into the fashion for optical entertainments in America during the 19th century. The object, known as a perspective glass, was made between 1830 and 1836 by the Philadelphia optical firm of John McAllister & Co. It consists of two large, round magnifying lenses fixed inside rectangular panels of cherry wood on top of a round stand. A framed mirror hinged to the back of the panels can be propped at a 45-degree angle using a pin and hook. Unlike other models, this perspective glass is remarkable for having two lenses instead of one—but more on that later.

An illustration of the more typical single-lens perspective glass (also called a diagonal mirror) from the 1815 trade catalogue of English opticians G. and W. Proctor (Printed Books and Periodicals Collection, Winterthur Library)

How was it used? Setting a print on the table in front of the glass, the user could peer through the lens and view a magnified reflection of the print. Together, the magnification and reflection created an illusion of greater distance from the image, and the curved lens made the center of the image appear farther away than the edges. These optical effects lent depth and realism to the image, giving the viewer a sense of immersion in the depicted scene.

Perspective glasses became popular in Europe during the mid-1700s as part of a growing scientific culture brought about by the Enlightenment. Intellectual interest in scientific inquiry expanded into a widespread taste for “rational recreation,” which blurred the lines between education and amusement. People became interested in owning a wide range of optical devices, from actual scientific instruments like telescopes and microscopes to more recreational objects, such as magic lanterns. Such gadgetry delighted the user with novel and sometimes spectacular visual effects, while also supposedly teaching the optical principles behind them. The craze for the perspective glass soon spread across the ocean from European parlors to American ones, earning mentions in American newspaper advertisements as early as 1749.

A perspective view from Winterthur’s print collection –note the backward title. (1960.357.6)

Prints called perspective views or vues d’optique were created specifically to be viewed with the perspective glass. These prints used dramatic linear perspectives to maximize the sense of depth. The titles were often printed backward so that they could be read when reflected in the mirror. Perspective views mostly depicted foreign landscapes, street views, architectural interiors, and political or historical events.

 

These scenes of foreign locales permitted viewers a form of visual travel, allowing them to imagine themselves in distant places. In an age when actual travel was expensive, time-consuming, and frequently uncomfortable, cities could be explored hassle-free from within the comfort of the parlor.  However, perspective views not only enabled virtual vacations but also gave the viewer valuable political and cultural instruction; in particular, they often served as an aid for mothers educating their children at home.

Beyond instructing and amusing, perspective glasses and prints also appealed to their owners as status symbols. These luxury objects served as elegant display pieces, as pseudo-scientific devices, and as fashionable entertainment in upper-class homes. Perspective glass owners invited guests into their parlors to participate in an exclusive activity that showed off their learning, wealth, and hosting skills.

Looking through the perspective glass with my fellow student, Lydia Blackmore.

Although the McAllister glass is not quite as flashy as some of the inlaid mahogany models produced during the 18th century, it has one thing the others don’t: two side-by-side lenses. Though we cannot know for certain why this unusual form was created, I can imagine it as a special order from an eccentric customer, or an experimental piece created at the maker’s whimsy. The two lenses are spaced too widely to have been meant for a single viewer’s left and right eyes, which suggests that the double-lens construction was instead designed to heighten the social aspect of the viewing experience. Rather than taking turns looking at the prints, a host and his guest (or a mother and her child) might peer together into the side-by-side lenses and explore the images as a shared activity.

Through the efforts of Director of Collections Linda Eaton, I was able to have the McAllister perspective glass set up for viewing with some of Winterthur’s perspective prints. Although Winterthur students have handling privileges in the museum collections, it’s not every day that we’re given the chance to interact with the objects as they might originally have been used. Viewing prints through the McAllister glass was like getting to sit down in an antique chair with a “DO NOT SIT” label on it, or trying on an 18th-century dress to see how it felt. I couldn’t believe I was being allowed to (carefully) prop the mirror on its hinge and peer through one of the lenses at colorful vistas of Venice, Paris, and Boston. Finally, I thought, I would see what all the fuss was about: the vivid images would visually transport me to distant places.

A view through the lens: not quite as exhilarating as I had hoped.

My virtual voyage, however, did not live up to the hype. Although the convex lens magnified the beautifully colored prints, the illusion of depth was much less striking than I had expected—barely perceptible, in fact. The awkward angles created by the framing of the mirror and the lens were distracting, and I could still see the tabletop and the room around me. Had my eyes become jaded by years of seeing images enhanced with special effects, or was the effect of the perspective glass just not that special?

It’s hard to imagine what a perspective view would look like through the glass to someone who had never seen a photograph, much less a movie or computer display. We live in a culture saturated with flashy technology and moving images—but in the early 1800s, brightly colored prints seen through a perspective glass were perhaps the closest anyone could come to experiencing virtual reality.

If you take Winterthur’s introductory tour this spring, be sure to keep an eye out for the McAllister perspective glass in Maple-Port Royal Hall! It will certainly be keeping an eye (or two) on you.

As a first-year student in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, Kate Swisher enjoys handling old things and exploring their cultural meanings. She first fell in love with museum work in high school while giving tours in pioneer costume at her local historical society. Although she is most interested in late Victorian and 20th-century objects, she made an exception for the perspective glass because it reminds her of WALL-E.
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And the Trophy Goes To…

Posted on May 4, 2012

What do centuries-old drinking traditions have to do with horse races? At first glance, not much. But at Winterthur we have a long tradition of collecting beverage ware, and as anyone who’s ever attended Point-to-Point knows, we do love a good steeplechase.

As it happens, the Point-to-Point traditions have roots dating back to the 1700s.  While we have only been running the event since 1979, two of the Point-to-Point trophies take their direct inspiration from historic objects in our collection.

The 18th-century two-handled cup is on the left, while the Vicmead Trophy based on it is on the right.

The Vicmead Plate Trophy has been awarded annually since the first Winterthur Point-to-Point in 1979. The trophy honors the founding of the local Vicmead Hunt Club in 1920, but its shape dates back to a Boston two-handled cup. Made by Boston silversmith Thomas Milner between 1710 and 1745, the cup is inscribed with initials that likely represent three different owners of the cup. The Vicmead Plate Trophy copies the Milner cup in the shape of the handles as well as in the curve of the body. The trophy was made in 1978 or ’79 by William DeMatteo.

The cup on the left was made by silversmith Jeremiah Dummer in Boston in 1690 (1960.1053). The Isabella du Pont Sharp trophy (on the right), borrows the design of the cup.

Also made by William DeMatteo, the Isabella du Pont Sharp Memorial Trophy is another Point-to-Point race award. This trophy, however, was inspired by an even older vessel in Winterthur’s collection: a two-handled cup made by Jeremiah Dummer in Boston sometime around 1690. Made of silver and inscribed with the words “Benjamin Coffin / to / RG [or RC],” the cup provided inspiration for the Sharp Memorial trophy in the handles and the fluted portion of the body.

Silversmith Bill DeMatteo creating Point-to-Point trophies. Photo by Art Smith. Courtesy of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

After being presented to the winners of the races at this weekend’s Point-to-Point, the trophies will be treated by conservators. Then, they—along with their historic inspirations—will be on view in the entryway to the Winterthur Galleries from June 7, 2012 through January 6, 2013 as an accompaniment to the exhibition Uncorked! Wine, Objects & Tradition.

The Delaware Steeplechase and Race Association Trophy, made in 1830 and on view in the exhibition Uncorked!

In that exhibition, be sure to see the beautifully crafted Delaware Steeplechase and Race Association Trophy in silver dating back to the 1830s.  You can also get a glance at the 1830s trophy and learn more about it at the Uncorked! online exhibition.

By Shoshana Resnikoff
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The Motor House and the Chauffeur: How the Auto Changed Traditional American Country Life

Posted on May 2, 2012

Winterthur's 1927 Rolls-Royce outside of the house

We are all looking forward to the seventh year of Winterthur hosting a wide array of notable historic automobiles on each Saturday in May. I have been thinking about these cars in a slightly different way as part of research for a book I am writing with Maggie Lidz, Winterthur’s estate historian, on servants, “back-of the-house” spaces, and the outbuildings that made up large country places. Where were these autos housed and what did those buildings require? Where did the chauffeurs live? And what was their status in the household? With Downton Abbey fresh in so many of our minds, I wanted to offer a few observations on the role of the automobile in early 20th-century country life.

 

Indoors & Out, June 1907

A 1907 article in the magazine Indoors and Out, “The Home of the Motor Car,” sparked my interest.  What would such a “home” be like? I have been trying to imagine the first decade of the 20th  century and the reactions of both wealthy owners and their staff when contemplating the need to find a place for these new mechanical contraptions. I can picture the head coachman or the stable grooms looking on with horror as a car came sputtering down the drive to the stable yard with dust flying and horses rearing.

Radford's Garages, Winterthur Library

What on earth were they to do with this thing? Soon magazines and books started offering advice on designs for garages, placement on the estate, and hiring and training chauffeurs.  Warnings were issued that trying to shift a man whose knowledge was horses into the role of chauffeur and mechanic was likely to end in hard feelings and maybe even a crashed car.

Questions being pondered were whether the garage should look like the residence or perhaps copy the carriage house in style, or was it deserving of its own emblematic design? Often outbuildings were the place where architects let all of their creativity flow, mixing historically inspired designs with dashes of fantasy or whimsy. How appealing that the most modern means of transportation at the time—the automobile—might be housed in a Tudor style structure. I wonder what message is here! 

Garage in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, from Indoors & Out, June 1907

In the early 1900s the immediate challenge for the garage designer was planning for safe gasoline storage, shelving for parts and tires, and appropriate levels of heat and ventilation. After all, this was before the corner gas station existed. An ideal arrangement could have the chauffeur living in quarters adjacent to the garage or above. Large estates might have quite sizable accommodations for the head chauffeur and his family and separate quarters for guests’ chauffeurs and other support staff.

Country Life in America, August 1905

Smart manufacturers came up with a wide array of accessories for the garage: turntables for easy access; automatic overhead washing equipment; lifts and pulleys to ease maintenance.  Many advocated combining garages and greenhouses. I thought that odd at first, but they made their case with the economies of a shared heating system, and if the chauffeur was a “handyman,” he could also assist in the greenhouse.

The more I have read about autos in the first decade of the 20th century, the more I’ve realized what a new world this was for so many people. Ideas that were being considered were wide ranging. If your chauffeur caused an accident or injury, were you liable? (There were many court cases that tried to sort that out, and the answer varied.) In managing your household staff, was the chauffeur on the par with the head coachman, the butler, and housekeeper, or was he below or even somehow separate and above? When traveling and staying at another private house or hotel, where would the chauffeur stay and take his meals?

Uniform advertisement, Winterthur Library

There are telling descriptions of chauffeurs taking exception to being called a servant or being required to wear a uniform or livery.  So many of the first chauffeurs that were hired came from a mechanic’s background—a vital skill in the early days of motoring, so they resisted attempts at molding them into traditional roles as domestic staff. The New York Times from these years is filled with stories of conflict between chauffeur and owner, of chauffeurs joy riding in owners’ cars (not infrequently with a bit too much whiskey in their systems), and their refusal to undertake many tasks. A 1919 headline reads “DUTIES FOR ONE CHAUFFEUR—Resigned When Told to Freeze Ice Cream, and Carry Wash.” And echoing Downton Abbey, the papers thrilled with tales of the young heiress running away with the chauffeur and—as in this headline of 1914, “Rich Brothers Bar Chauffeur’s Bride”—finding themselves banished from her home.

Of course this has all started me wondering more about the home for the motor cars at Winterthur. Who were the early chauffeurs who worked for Colonel Henry A. du Pont and then for his son Henry Francis, and what was the transition like when the older Coach House started housing cars as well as carriages?

Coach House at Winterthur

Greg Landrey, Winterthur’s Director of Library, Conservation, Academic Programs, has lectured about and written some wonderful articles on the automobiles here at Winterthur. His research helps answer some of these questions. (Make sure you attend his May 12th talk on auto advertising in the 1930s.) In a future blog post, I will talk more about where the autos lived here and at the du Pont’s summer house in Southampton as well as who cared for them.

I am still in the thick of this project and am looking forward to new discoveries. If you have any stories or photos that might assist with my research, please leave a comment here—I’d love to hear what you think!

Jeff Groff is director of public programs at Winterthur. His research interests might be termed eclectic—architecture and interiors of American country places, the Colonial Revival, Quaker life, garden history, and “gentlemen farming.”
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Tailgating Tips from MasterChef Winner Jennifer Behm!

Posted on May 1, 2012

Master Chef winner Jennifer Behm. Photo by Chris Tomko/FOX.

Point-to-Point is here! (This Sunday, May 6, to be precise.) To help you get ready, we’re sharing local caterer and MasterChef winner Jennifer Behm’s special recommendations for making your day at the races fabulous.

10. Pick a Theme
This way, if you have guests who offer to bring something, they know what direction to head in.

9. Create a Signature Drink
If it’s fruity, I recommend freezing some of the fruit the night before to help keep drinks cool.  You may want to get cool signature cups so everyone knows whose tailgate has the best drinks.  Another idea is to use carved-out frozen oranges or lemons as food and beverage vessels.

8. Serving Drinks
Let’s face it—you want to enjoy the party too. Here’s how: get two five-gallon glass containers with lids. If you choose a vessel with a spout, beware: if the spout clogs or breaks, party foul. Bonus tip: bring two plastic ladles. (It’s always good to have a back-up in case yours breaks or the neighboring tailgate forgot theirs.) Keep beverages in an open metal tub filled with ice.

7. “Who has the opener?”
It’s always the question. Take butcher’s twine and tie one end to the opener and the other end to the leg of the table. You may want two, one for each end of the table. Other things not to forget: sunscreen, bug spray, duct tape. (Yep, duct tape. It has 1,001 uses. If the hem falls on your dress, duct tape to the rescue!)

6. Keeping Drinks Chilled
Solution: cut off the top of a milk carton, fill it halfway with water and your signature drink, garnish (some possibilities are cut-up lemons, oranges, watermelon, basil, or grapes), freeze, then add more water and garnish, and freeze again. At the beginning of the day, drop it in your serving container and voilà! I recommend making two of these, especially if it is hot. As it melts, the fruit doubles as a snack.

5. Keeping It Cool

Point-to-Pointers get started on the spread. Photo by Pat Crowe.

Ice always seems to be the first thing that runs out. To avoid this, collect one-liter soda bottles with lids during the days leading to Point-to-Point. Fill them 3/4 full with juice, water, or your favorite sodas—the beverages you’ll be drinking during the day—and freeze them. These double to keep the food cold. (If you do run out of ice at Point-to-Point though, don’t worry: an ice truck will be selling eight-pound bags for $3).

4. Stepping Up Your Food Game
It doesn’t have to be expensive. Try using blood orange juice instead of regular OJ for morning cocktails. If champagne is too expensive, try cava or prosecco (my two favorites) for Bellinis and hibiscus mimosas. Try a chayote, daikon radish, and green apple salad. Want seafood? No worries: serve a crab and watermelon salad or a refreshing ceviche in an ice bowl.

Setting the scene at Point-to-Point with matching tailgate theme and outfits! Photo by Pat Crowe.

3. Morning Libations
To get things off on the right hoof, I usually set out eight disposable dishes filled with garnishes next to drink mix and different juices. It’s fun and keeps guests occupied trying different drinks while I set up.

2. Keeping Food Hot
Create your own hot box! Take three or four bricks, wrap them in foil, and place them in the oven at 500 degrees for one hour. Line a cooler with foil-wrapped cardboard, place hot bricks in the bottom, and cover with another piece of foil-wrapped cardboard. Place food in the cooler. Do not open until ready to serve.

1. Be Organized!
A clear plan of attack is critical. Label your dishes so set up is easy. Use chalkboard spray paint to cover wooden cutouts and print what each dish or beverage is. Use weighted vessels for flower arrangements so they don’t blow over and use large binder clips to hold down linens.

Most importantly, enjoy the day socializing with your friends and family. Take in the races and the beautiful grounds and have a great time!

Family, food, and fun at Point-to-Point. Photo by Bob Hickok.

Want even more tailgating tips? You’ll find a great list of creative ideas at the Point-to-Point Facebook page.

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Travels through Conservation: Preserving Temperance

Posted on April 25, 2012
By Director of Conservation Lois Alcott Price

The temperance banner after conservation. 1969.7815.

The Textile Lab has recently been the site of a collaboration between painting and textile conservation. Flaking paint on a fragile silk edged cotton banner scheduled for exhibition in Uncorked! Wine, Objects & Tradition has required creative problem solving to stabilize both the shattered silk and the lifting paint. The banner is a rare survival advocating temperance that was created as part of the temperance movement in the 19th century.

Dye samples meant to match the silk border of the banner.

After testing multiple dye recipes to get an exact match, textile conservator Kate Sahmel dyed fine silk crepeline to match the silk boarder and then gently adhered it to provide support. The side edges are complete, but the challenge of the tabs attached to the wooden rods at the top and bottom remains.

Conservator Kate Sahmel consolidates the silk.

Paintings conservator Mary McGinn fed adhesive under each paint flake with a tiny brush, then activated the adhesion with a warm tacking iron. The adhesive chosen had to be flexible and chemically stable, but not change the appearance of the paint.

Conservator Mary McGinn consolidates the painted details on the banner using an adhesives.

Come see the beautifully-conserved banner on display in the Uncorked! exhibition, opening April 28 here at Winterthur!

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Hair Apparent: False Hair Caps and the Mysterious World of 19th-Century Hair Anxiety

Posted on April 20, 2012

Winterthur's hair cap, in all its strange glory. 1830-1855, 2004.25.

I have a reputation for loving the stranger objects at Winterthur. Ask me what I like and I’ll usually respond, “The high style Philadelphia furniture is impressive, but did you see the glass fly trap on the second floor? It’s amazing.” So it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite objects in the collection is one that has only been on view once and might never again leave storage. And what might it be? Why, a false hair cap, of course!

The back of the false hair cap illustrates the looped construction of the "scalp" and the three ringlets on either side.

A false hair cap is a head covering meant to imitate the look of human hair, and if you don’t recognize the term, don’t worry; we made it up. Hair enhancements are nothing new—the 18th and 19th centuries were marked by people wearing wigs and hair pieces to replace or augment their own hair.  Wigs were almost always made of human hair, however, while the false hair cap is made of dark brown silk thread masquerading as human hair. Silk threads are twisted together to imitate human hair and then manipulated into a “fabric” of interconnected loops that formed the cap, following the lines of the wearer’s head. The front of the cap would have framed the wearer’s face, dipping down on the sides to cover her ears and form two sets of three ringlets. As far as objects go, this one is pretty obscure—we’ve only ever heard of three similar objects in other museums and don’t have any historical records for them.

So why would a woman want fake hair? The answer to that question lies in the fascinating world of 19th-century hair anxiety.

An article in an 1854 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book articulates the fear of women losing their hair. Entitled “Caps, Headdresses, etc,” it reads:

When the gift of luxuriant hair is passing away, and what once was a pleasure becomes an unsatisfactory task; when no parting, or brushing, or curling will conceal the deficiency, and one is obliged to decide between the two evils—false hair or caps!—forgive our sex if we do so with a troubled and dejected spirit, nor be it all set down to a weak personal vanity by those who have never been so tried.

"Caps, Headdreses, etc." Godey's Lady's Book, August 1854.

The article goes on to sum up  the pain of hair loss: “No one, until they themselves have suffered it, can understand the mortification with which one resigns one’s self to the necessity of wearing caps… if there be pangs of vanity, there is also vexation of spirit.”

Not only was female hair loss an embarrassment, many saw it as a symptom of “unseemly activity.” Describing the difference between male and female hair loss, a Godey’s article titled “Diseases of the Hair and Directions for its Management” claims, “The hair of men more commonly falls off than that of women; and they become bald from the greater excitement of the brain which their pursuits occasion.”

But if baldness was associated with intellectual pursuits and thus more suited to men, how did women lose their hair? By experimenting with intellectualism, of course. “Bald women are scarcely ever seen; nevertheless, some ladies who follow the pursuits of literature are obliged to cover their baldness with headdresses of hair prepared by the coiffure.” (Given how hard my classmates and I study, I guess we should be happy to have hair at all.) A woman suffering from hair loss did not just have to contend with her altered appearance; she also endured a reputation as an uppity bluestocking.

One of the many confusing aspects of the cap is the woven construction of the “scalp.”  While a wig would fully cover a woman’s head, the looped construction of the hair cap leaves space for whatever is beneath it to show through.  This must mean that the wearer wasn’t entirely bald. Women who lost all their hair might use a full wig, but women who

A fashion plate from Godey's Lady's Book shows how a full head of hair was necessary even under fabric caps. The false hair cap might have worked under fabric caps such as this one, providing a woman with extra volume and curls. Godey's Lady's Book, January 1853.

had some hair but contended with thinning or patchy follicles might have used some kind of smaller hair piece such as a scalpette or frizette.  The false hair cap probably served a similar purpose.  While not full enough to replace an entire head of hair, the loops that formed the “scalp” served to cover limited hair loss, while the ringlets at the neck added stylish volume for hair too short, brittle, or thin to curl into the popular styles of the day.  Popular hair styles in the mid 19th century required ringlets peaking coyly out from beneath fabric caps and bonnets, and the false hair cap could provide those curls for women who lacked them naturally.

You might be wondering when I’m going to explain why the cap was made of thread and not hair.  Unfortunately, I can’t.  We don’t know why the hair cap was made of thread.  It seems a very strange choice, especially given the availability of human hair wigs in the period.  While I can’t know for sure, I do have an idea. Could it be that the hair cap was a more affordable version of a wig? The cap’s construction is simpler than that of a wig, which involved extensive heating, curling, and stitching to create. Wig-makers were also highly skilled at their craft, allowing them to charge a premium. The simple construction and materials of the hair cap might have made it a cheaper option for a budget-conscious woman.

A final diagram illustrates the fascinating construction of the false hair cap. Click on the image for a closer view and for an examination of the strange "pillars" of thread around which each ringlet is built.

The mystery of the false hair cap continues. Made of thread rather than hair and used to save women from the public embarrassment of hair loss, the false hair cap has spawned more theories and questions than it has answered.  What it does do, however, is provide a fascinating window into the truly obsessive world of 19th-century women’s hair anxiety. So the next time you find yourself in a drug store near the hair dye and Rogaine, remember: as crazy as we all can get about our appearances, we inherited it from our cultural ancestors.

Shoshana Resnikoff is a second-year Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture.  She is writing her thesis on the uniforms worn by the Navy WAVES, the first women to serve in the Navy during World War II.  She likes baking, Theodore Roosevelt, and 20th-century craft movements, and is pleased to say that despite the pressures of being a student at Winterthur, she still has a full head of very curly hair.
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Puzzled by Puzzle Jugs?

Posted on April 19, 2012

Puzzled by puzzle jugs? Perplexed by punch bowls? Don’t worry, because Uncorked! is here to teach you everything you ever wanted to know about early American drinking traditions. Uncorked! Wine, Objects & Tradition, which opens to the public on Saturday, April 28, will address American drinking culture, covering the gamut from religious alcohol consumption to complicated drinking games.  In this video, shot during installation of the show, curator Leslie Grigbsy explains some of her favorite objects. Tune in for a hot tip on how to solve the riddle of the puzzle jug!

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Twentieth-Century Wine at Winterthur

Posted on April 13, 2012

Henry Francis du Pont

In preparation for what promises to be a fantastic exhibition on wine implements—Uncorked! by Senior Curator of Ceramics and Glass Leslie Grigsby—I have been researching the history of the wine cellar here at Winterthur.

The museum’s founder, Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), was interested in wine all his life. Below is a partial inventory of the wine cellar from the 1960s, which is exceptional by any standard. The burgundies are considered among the best produced in France of the century.

H. F. du Pont’s father, Colonel Henry Algernon du Pont (died in 1926), also had a large cellar. It was so extensive, in fact, that H. F. was still drinking bottles from his father’s collection in the 1960s.

Partial inventory of the Winterthur wine cellar, 1960s

This list seems to have been from a wine closet near the dining room, 1960s.

Prohibition inspired the du Ponts to create a cellar that might last the rest of their lives. We have inventories of the 1930 wine (and liquor) stash, which was stored in sites from Florida to Massachusetts and included bank vaults filled with trunks of alcohol in Long Island and a town house cellar in Washington DC. At Winterthur, a dozen or so closets, cellars, and storage areas packed with wine and spirits were spread all over the 2,000-acre estate.

After World War Two, du Pont rented storage space from his New York wine purveyors Midtown Wine, Colony Wine, and Sherry Lehman. He also bought bottles from the Wilmington Club. When he traveled to Europe during the 1950s, he bought directly from vineyards. We know from lists that still survive today that he and his friends traded advice on which vineyards to visit in places like Spain.

Winterthur owns all sorts of interesting 20th-century wine ephemera, such as the Prohibition-era Berry Bros. price list from London below, and I am working on all sorts of questions about it. I’ll post more as my research continues, so stay tuned!

Prohibition-era price list

Maggie Lidz is Winterthur’s estate historian and curator of garden objects. She is the author of The du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine as well as Life at Winterthur: A du Pont Family Album. Together with Public Programs Director Jeff Groff, she is currently working on a book about servants, “back-of the-house” spaces, and the outbuildings that made up large country places, due out from Acanthus Press in 2014.
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