The great majority of what we know of how Robert Beverley was shaped by the powerful forces at work in his world is revealed through his surviving Letterbooks, by his great home, Blandfield, and the furnishings with which he chose to surround...
John Rupp's name would not be well known today if it were not for the survival of the furniture he made. For this reason, I explain both the impact John Rupp made throughout his life in the Hanover, Pennsylvania, community and the importance of the...
Elevation of crafts and craftspeople and the belief that crafts could
transform everyday life were the core ideas that sustained Webb from the
beginning of her career in the 1930s until its close in the 1970s. Celebration of
the human spirit and...
Following President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, offered President Andrew Johnson his reception room on April 16, 1865, as a temporary Executive office until Mrs. Lincoln sufficiently recovered from her...
The architecture of the Atlantis, like many Art Deco hotels in Miami Beach, was streamlined and Modern. Art Deco buildings often has sleek, undecorated, and curved exteriors. The decoration that appeared on these minimalist buildings, like that...
Over the course of America’s history, many First Ladies have made their mark on fashion and become trendsetters while others have faded into the past with little regard for their attire. All First Ladies have had to balance their attire between...
First Lady Caroline Harrison (1832-1892) and upholsterer Edgar Yergason (1840
-1920) were participants in a complex cultural reassessment of American taste at the end
of the nineteenth century. Their collaborative redecoration of the White House...
An examination of The House Beautiful’s articles and advertisements demonstrates how the popular press, and in particular a decorating magazine, promoted America’s broad enthusiasm for American Indians at the turn-of-the-century, including the...
Wilde is deservedly remembered as an icon of the nineteenth century for his sublime wit and his singular image; however, that status often obscures his contributions to the Aesthetic Movement. A close examination of his lectures, essays, and his...
In the twenty-first century, the names of shoe designers from Jimmy Choo to Manolo Blahnik easily crop up in conversations, but shoe designers did not always enjoy such notoriety, nor did shoes always hold as much prevalence in a woman’s...
As the twentieth century opened, American residential interiors anticipated transformative change. Instead of "small, box-like rooms, each devoted to a special purpose," now made obsolete by effective central heating systems, homeowners sought...
This thesis chronicles the activities and exhibitions of the National Society of Craftsmen (1906-1920) and its successor, the New York Society of Craftsmen (1920-1957), and analyzes them in relation not only to the Arts and Crafts Movement (A&CM),...
Mary Walker Phillip's work, 1940s - 1970s, exemplifies the "search for form" that Eliel Saarinen, Finnish-American architect and first President of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, established as the basis for Cranbrook's progressive,...
This paper examines William C. Pahlmann's contributions to American home decoration, specifically by discussing his defining work (furniture, fabrics and residential interiors) at the one of the highest points of his career - the late 1940s and...
In seeking to develop a better understanding of the Egyptian revival in the post-Civil War years of the 1870s, the master's thesis provides an analysis of the Egyptian revival reception room at Cedar Hill, a country house in Warwick, Rhode Island....
This thesis shows that high-end designers' fashion lines at big box stores democratize the designers' names rather than their high-end designs. Isaac Mizrahi, Vera Wang, and Norma Kamali are all fashion designers who fit into this new phase of...
This thesis demonstrates that from 1880 to 1930, wealthy American women wore refashioned antique European lace to reinforce their Gilded Age identification with the European privileged class and to distinguish themselves from the middle class who...
The White House has always been, and continues to be, a democratic symbol of American fortitude and independence. Just as the structure's exterior showcases these attributes, the interior echoes them as well in the choice furnishings utilized by...
In the summer of 1919, the founder of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, and the composer Igor Stravinsky invited Matisse to design the ballet Le Chant du Rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale). Based on "The Nightingale" by Hans Christian...
