MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Collections of a family that are left to museums provide a glimpse into the life of the collector as well as the time during which the collection was being amassed. Unless the family is a bold-name family or the objects are by bold-name designers, most never see the light of day again once they are in a museum’s collection. If any pieces from these collections are exhibited they are the finest and rarest of the possessions that are just the tip of the iceberg of a life spent collecting. In the case of the Russell sisters from Brooklyn, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and Columbia University’s Library hold objects that, studied together, provide a lens giving a real look at the life of a family. With over 700 objects of the sisters living in museum collections, we can nearly recreate their way of living through a study of the objects that survive. There are playing cards and games, china and glassware, prints and drawings, Christmas ornaments, children and adult clothes, commemorative plaques and medals, bedcovers, desk accessories, wallpapers and borders. Most are American goods and nearly all are dated to the second half of the nineteenth century. This is a Material Culture study that began with one quilt with part one of my research being presented at Cooper Hewitt in April. Part two will build on that work to take a closer look at specific objects as a means of understanding how upper-middle class, urban dweller Americans were collecting and living at the turn of the 20th Century; Part two also serves as a call for design historians and curators to study the non bold-face (i.e. marketable) names of collectors and makers in order to present a more inclusive history.