E-Resources for the Study of American Material Culture
This list of electronic resources for the study of American material culture in a global context is a living, evolving document that is regularly edited and updated by staff (reference@winterthur.org) of the Winterthur Library. We encourage you to share this page, and please send suggestions for resources that we have missed!
Please note that some of the resources listed here are only available by subscription, and as such can only be accessed while on the Winterthur campus, the campus of the University of Delaware, or through Winterthur’s Citrix network. Please contact us for help with access issues.
Contents
Decorative Arts and Material Culture
Black Craftspeople Digital Archive
From 1619 to beyond, black craftspeople, both free and enslaved, worked to produce the valued architecture, handcrafts, and decorative arts of the American South. The Black Craftspeople Digital Archive seeks to enhance what we know about black craftspeople by telling both a spatial story and a historically informed story that highlights the lives of black craftspeople and the objects they produced.
Boston Furniture Archive, 1630-1930
The Archive’s database provides catalog information and photographs of objects produced between 1630 and 1930 in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, and Roxbury. In addition, the Archive offers basic information about furniture design and construction and links to related online resources.
The Colored Conventions Project
The Colored Conventions Project is an archive of the proceedings from conventions organized by Black men and women in the US and Canada from the 1830s–1890s. There is material, particularly in the exhibits sections that includes coverage of the role of milliners of dressmakers in these movements, domestic spaces and boarding houses, and the whole archive is related to graphic design.
Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
A database for information about enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Caribbean during the Colonial and Ante-Bellum Periods. Analyze and compare archaeological assemblages and architectural plans from different sites at unprecedented levels of detail. DAACS is a community resource, conceived and maintained in the Department of Archaeology at Monticello, in collaboration with research institutions and archaeologists working throughout the Atlantic World.
The Dominy Craftsmen Collection
Three generations of the Dominy family of Long Island, New York functioned as artisans from ca. 1760 to ca. 1850. Survival of their shop equipment and tools into the twentieth century, combined with extensive accounts, letters, and receipts chronicling their craft production, business activity, education, social life, and political views, provide unique insights about craftsmen working in rural and urban communities of colonial America and the New Republic.
The Dominy Craftsmen Collection brings together material from the revised and enlarged digital edition of With Hammer in Hand by Charles F. Hummel; the extensive collection of Dominy family manuscript material in the Winterthur Library; a video-taped lecture about the Dominy craftsmen; and a brief description of books owned by the craftsmen and their families.
Freedom on the Move Project (Cornell University)
“A database of fugitives from American Slavery,” according to the website, but more accurately, an archive maintained by Cornell of fugitive slave ads, which is particularly interesting in terms of the garments and objects that are often described in the ads.
Gulf South Decorative and Fine Arts Database
The Decorative Arts of the Gulf South (DAGS) research project at The Historic New Orleans Collection, formerly known as the Classical Institute of the South (CIS), catalogs historic objects made or used in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama dating from the eighteenth century to 1865. Images and information collected by THNOC are made available in a publicly accessible repository hosted by the Louisiana Digital Library. Since 2011, groups of Summer Fellows from graduate programs focusing on history, material culture, and art history have cataloged over 1,000 objects at over 20 sites in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
A collection of primary source information on nearly 90,000 artisans practicing 127 trades in the early South, maintained by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.
The MESDA Object Database contains descriptions, data, and approximately 100,000 photographs of nearly 20,000 objects—in both private and public collections—that were made in the early American South.
The Pewter Society Database of British Isles Pewterers
The Database of Pewterers brings together most of the information that is known about British and Irish pewterers. It includes their marks, hallmarks, dates, locations, wares, family trees, published sources and other information. You can extract information about a pewterer, and perform comprehensive searches for names, marks, locations, wares and dates.
Philadelphia Furniture: Design, Artisans, and Techniques
A digital extension of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 2020 catalogue, American Furniture: 1650-1840, and curator Alexandra Kirtley’s taxonomy for describing Philadelphia design elements. The website contains information about the design inspirations of Philadelphia furniture, construction techniques, and artisans who made, carved, upholstered, and ornamented the furniture, and “seeks to provide a space for the appreciation, study, interpretation, and research on Philadelphia furniture.”
Rhode Island Furniture Archive
The Rhode Island Furniture Archive at the Yale University Art Gallery documents furniture and furniture making in Rhode Island from the time of the first European colonization in 1636 through the early nineteenth century. Bringing together records of surviving furniture, individuals who owned it, and known furniture makers, this archive aims to provide a complete account of the specific culture, local variations, and artistic practices surrounding the first two centuries of furniture making in Rhode Island.
Current Auction Data (ca. 1985-present)
Antiques and the Arts Weekly archive
Allows for searching of ads posted by antiques dealers and auction houses, and articles
Full issues from 2006 to present
IP-restricted; available on Winterthur campus
Includes Decorative Art and Fine Art and Design modules
Results dating back to 1985. Contains records from more than 1,800 international auction houses
Ask library staff to log you in
Price Archive provides results from over 2,000 international auction houses, with records from 1986 to the present
IP-restricted; available on Winterthur campus
Gathers data from over 140 US auction houses; only online database to focus its coverage exclusively on major regional auction venues throughout the US
All records have images
Retrospective Auction Data
1.5 million records taken from source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs (1650-1945), and dealer stock books
Strongest in European fine art
Auction Catalogs from the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
This collection, hosted by the Internet Archive, contains an ever-growing number digitized sales catalogs from the Met Libraries' collections. The catalogs date from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, and are primarily from American and European auction houses.
Note: If you are unable to find the pre-1923 auction catalog you’re looking for on any of these sites, try searching the Internet Archive for digitized auction catalogs using the name of the auction house as the creator name.
Full Text Newspapers
Please see the University of Delaware’s libguide to newspapers for comprehensive descriptions of their digital newspaper collections: Research Guides - Newspaper Collections (Digital)
Accessible Archives, 1726-1902
Access through UDel or on the Winterthur campus
Offers searchable full text of 18th and 19th c. newspapers and magazines:
- African American Newspapers: The 19th Century [1827-1909]
- American Counties Histories to 1900
- The Civil War: A Newspaper Perspective [November 1860 - April 1865]
- Godey’s Lady’s Book [1830-1898]
- The Lily [1849-1856]
- The Pennsylvania Gazette [1728-1800]
- The Pennsylvania Genealogical Catalogue: Chester County [1809-1870]
- The Pennsylvania Newspaper Record: Delaware County [1819-1870]
- South Carolina Newspapers [1732-1780]
- Virginia Gazette [1736-1780]
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (1789-1963) - Library of Congress
Early American Newspapers / America’s Historical Newspapers (1690s-1922) - access through UDel
Digitized from cover to cover. May be searched by keyword, presidential era, place of publication, era in American history, title, etc. Great source for craftsman advertisements.
A large collection of digitized historical newspapers from the U.S. and Canada. Coverage varies greatly, but some go as far back as the 18th century.
