Highlights Archives
Decorative Arts Database Documents Artifacts
Examples of the state's rich and diverse material culture are now available online from the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database. The database is an online catalog of artifacts housed in the collections of historical societies and museums across Wisconsin. It documents decorative arts objects with Wisconsin stories to tell, including furniture, ceramics, textiles and metalwork ranging from 1800 to the 1920s. Here you can find artifacts such as an elaborately painted and stenciled rocking chair signed by a Mineral Point cabinetmaker (from the collections of Pendarvis), an iron cooking fork with delicate copper inlay made by a Green Bay blacksmith as a wedding gift for his daughter from the collections of the Neville Public Museum of Brown County, and an intricately patterned red and tan coverlet woven on a Jacquard loom (from the collections of the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society).
The project is the Society's first collaboration with the Chipstone Foundation of Milwaukee, a private foundation dedicated to research in American decorative arts, and with the Material Culture Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an interdisciplinary program for the study of objects in everyday life.
The database will continue to grow as project staff document and photograph artifacts at institutions throughout the state. Are you affiliated with a historical society or museum with a collection of Wisconsin-made objects? To find out how your organization can be included in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, contact Project Coordinator Emily Pfotenhauer.
:: Posted January 26, 2007
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