Articles

Color Blindness in Art

Color Blindness in Art

Color blindness, or color vision deficiency, affects about 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women. It is most commonly caused by a gene mutation on the X-c...

Chauncey Jerome and The Industrialization of Time

Prior to the industrial boom of the 1800s, time (for the average man) was measured by daylight, punctuated by sunrise and sunset, regardless of the...

Governance and Goodwill: The Resolute Desk of the Oval Office

Looking forward to election day, we've seen a lot of images and iconography of the American government lately. The White House, the Oval Office, a...

Halloween's Irish Roots

As with many mainstream holiday traditions celebrated in modern America, it's difficult to discern the origin and purpose of many of the ways in wh...

Egyptian Revival in the Victorian Era

While its popularity had ebbed and flowed for decades, Egyptian Revival architecture and style was most popular from 1880 to 1930 and then continue...

The Tradition of Dowry and Marriage Chests

The dowry chest has been used across cultures all over the world for thousands of years. First mentioned in Hammurabi's Code (circa 1750 B.C.), a w...

Equine Art Through the Ages

Horses are one of the most commonly depicted, and earliest represented, subjects of art. Our partnership with horses has benefited humankind for th...

The Value of Mahogany

Mahogany has a beautiful wood grain that darkens over time, giving warmth to any space. It's been favored by carpenters for centuries because of it...

Margaret Tafoya, Mother of Southwest Pottery

Margaret Tafoya, born 119 years ago today, was the matriarch of Santa Clara pottery. Serving as the bridge between the old and new ways, Tafoya was...

The Legacy of the House of Medici

While Renaissance era Florence, Italy was a republic at the time, there is no doubt that the Medici family ruled. Being bankers and wool merchants,...

Bronze Age Shipwrecks

Shipwrecks have always conjured a romantic notion in our heads; the riches they carried, the loss of life, the possibility of a perfectly preserved...

Benjamin Randolph: Philadelphia Cabinetmaker and American Revolutionary

Philadelphia cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph may not have been a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but his patriotism and hospitality were ...

The Anonymous Makers of Southern Furniture

Enslaved peoples in the United States were trained as artisans in just about every trade that existed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. From bl...