Testing the Waters: The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909

The story of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened in 1924, really begins with the museum’s Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909. The first exhibit of American furniture at an art museum, the Hudson-Fulton served as a way to “test the waters” to find out if there was an audience for American decorative arts. At the time, there were still many people who doubted the artistic value of American things and did not consider them worthy of being in museums. 

Portrait of Robert W. de Forest from
the collection of the Metropolitan Museum

But a group of progressive museum administrators who had come to the Met in the early 1900s believed that exhibiting American decorative arts would help open the museum to a broader audience. People who were not regular museum-goers might be intimidated by their lack of knowledge about fine art—painting and sculpture—but ordinary household things were potentially more accessible. Museum administrators also hoped that decorative arts displays would help teach good design and workmanship to visitors, who would use that knowledge to beautify their own homes and communities. 

The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum was due largely to the work of two administrators, trustee Robert de Forest and his assistant, Henry Watson Kent. They planned the exhibit to correspond with events that were happening all over New York to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River as well as the (slightly belated) centennial of the launch of Robert Fulton’s first steamboat in 1807. De Forest and Kent hoped to capitalize on the excitement generated by the celebration, as well as a planned exhibit of Dutch master paintings at the Met, to draw visitors to the American decorative arts display.

Promotional brochure produced by the
New York Central Railroad

Because the Met had no permanent collection of American objects, everything in the exhibition had to be borrowed from private collectors. The task of finding suitable objects fell almost entirely to Henry Watson Kent. Over the course of his career, first at the Slater Museum in Norwich, Connecticut, and then at the Grolier Club in New York, Kent had made many personal connections with collectors all over the United States. He was able to recruit R. T. H. Halsey and Luke Vincent Lockwood, two well-known experts on American furniture, to serve as advisory members of the exhibition committee.

Most of the seventeenth-century pieces on display were owned by a single collector, H. Eugene Bolles, a somewhat eccentric Bostonian lawyer who began collecting American antiques long before it became fashionable to do so. His cousin, George Palmer, lent many pieces from his collection of eighteenth-century furniture, while R. T. H. Halsey lent items from his collection of furniture made by Duncan Phyfe in the early nineteenth century. Other collectors lent portraits, silver, ceramics, and pewter, in addition to furniture.

Late-17th century chest with drawers
from the H. Eugene Bolles collection

The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition was a wild success, setting a record for attendance that would stand until the opening of the American Wing. While art critics had focused their attention on the exhibit of Dutch painting, visitors flocked to the furniture galleries. De Forest and Kent were vindicated in their belief that Americans would accept decorative arts as museum pieces. Soon after the exhibit ended, the Met acquired the Bolles collection for its permanent collection (philanthropist Margaret Olivia Sage purchased it, then donated it to the museum), intending for it to become the nucleus of a future American Wing.

However, the exhibition also made museum curators realize that some changes needed to be made to the way the items were displayed. At the Hudson-Fulton Exhibition, the furniture pieces were lined up in chronological order along the walls of the galleries. This method of organization was in accordance with accepted curatorial practice, but was thought by some observers to be a bit dull. Moreover, the relatively small scale of the pieces meant that they looked inconspicuous and out of place in the soaring Beaux-Arts galleries of the Met.

View of the Hudson-Fulton Exhibition. Note architectural wall fragment at far right.

Creating a series of period rooms seemed to be the perfect solution. The smaller scale of the rooms would complement the furniture as well as provide the broader context for the history of American decorative arts. Creating home-like settings would allow visitors to enter imaginatively into the scenes being depicted and, it was hoped, encourage them to think about the ways they could apply ideas from the exhibits to their own homes.

Over the next fifteen years, Robert de Forest and Henry Kent, along with curator R. T. H. Halsey, would work to build the Met’s collection of American decorative arts and to create a proper setting for their display. By the time the American Wing opened in 1924, much had changed in the world of art and antiques—and the colonial revival was about to become more popular than ever.

Toys Built to Last

Museum friend John Southwick has a wonderful collection of (mostly) Model A Ford vehicles, and he recently spoke at the museum about Model As. In the garages and buildings he stores his vehicles can be seen numerous other cool objects he collects such as road signs, garage signs and license plates. He also has a very fun group of toy vehicles – most of them trucks. I had the pleasure of setting up an exhibit of some of my favorites at the museum.

Anyone who ever played with pressed steel toys knows the charm and indestructibility of such objects. One also learns the names of their favorites as they become imprinted on the brain at an early age… There are just a few brands represented in this group; Wyandotte or All Metal Toys, Buddy L and Tonka will be the most recognizable depending on your age and love of toy trucks.

Pressed steel became a popular material for toy trucks starting during the 1930s industrial boom. Steel scrap was often used and pressed incredibly thin by huge machines. The sheets could then be cut and pressed into molds to make all sorts of shapes and objects that were strong and could be painted in bright colors. These pressed steel toys were more durable than wood and seemed more like the trucks they were made to represent. The idea caught on like wildfire among toy enthusiasts and new companies formed to take advantage of the markets created.

Steel was to be used only for the war effort during WWII and production naturally dropped off. After the war, however, these toys were in high demand and became more detailed and realistic. With the introduction of plastic into the construction there was no end to the details and features included in the vehicles. Because of the basic steel construction, however, the durability remained. Many of the cars in John’s collection are still strong enough to withstand some serious play!

1930s Wyandotte dump truck, pressed steel

1930s Wyandotte dump truck, pressed steel

1930s Wyandotte Art Deco livestock trailer

love the spare tire!

Wyandotte – All Metal Products Co

These trucks are my personal favorite because of their design. The lines and windows and curves appeal to my love of 1930s-1940s cars. They seem to have more character than the later vehicles.

All Metal Products Company was an American toy company founded in 1920 and based in Wyandotte, Michigan for most of its history. It produced inexpensive pressed metal toys under the Wyandotte brand name, and was the largest manufacturer of toy guns in the US for several decades in the 20th century. The company’s slogan was “Wyandotte Toys are Good and Safe.” To keep costs down, the company used scrap and surplus raw materials whenever possible, often manufacturing their toys from scrap metal obtained from local auto factories.

1930s Buddy L fire truck, pressed steel

1960s Buddy L fire truck hook & ladder, pressed steel, plastic

1960s Buddy L pickup truck, pressed steel, plastic

Buddy L Toys

Buddy L toys were first manufactured by the Moline Pressed Steel Company, started by Fred A. Lundahl in 1910. The company originally made fenders and other stamped body parts for the automobile industry. The company primarily supplied parts for the McCormack-Deering line of farm implements and International Harvester Company trucks. Moline Pressed Steel did not begin manufacturing toys until 1921. Mr. Lundhal wanted to make something new, different, and durable for his son.

Fred Lundahl started by making a toy dump truck out of steel scraps for his son Buddy. Soon after, he began selling Buddy L “toys for boys” made of pressed steel. Buddy L made toy cars, dump trucks, delivery vans, fire engines, construction equipment and trains. Many were large enough for a child to straddle, propelling himself with his feet. A pioneer in the steel toy field, Lundahl persuaded Marshall Field’s and F.A.O. Schwarz to carry his line. He did very well until the Depression, then sold the company.

1930s Keystone Ride 'Em wrecker truck, Packard Model, pressed steel

Keystone Manufacturing Company

The founders of the company were Chester Rimmer and Arthur Jackson. Originally Keystone specialized in movie machines and producing comedy films for young children from 1920-1924. (Remember the Keystone Cops?) By 1924 they changed course and started to produce the Keystone brand of pressed steel toys.

Keystone started out big - they made larger-sized toys, and they produced lots of them. They were given permission by the Packard Motor Company to create reproductions of their well known full sized truck models. In addition, they made toy airplanes, trains and construction oriented toys.

Keystone also made toys for J.C. Penny – under the name “Ride-Em”, these toys entered the market in 1932. Each toy made of a Packard truck had the famous Packard logo placed at the front of the truck, along with the Keystone logo – usually on the side of the toy. In 1937 the Packard line of toys was phased out along with the Packard logo. After WWII they began producing wooden toys including train sets, by the 1960s they had sold out to various companies and Keystone ceased to exist.

1950s Structo car hauler, pressed steel

1950s Structo car hauler, pressed steel

Structo Manufacturing was founded in Freeport, Illinois in 1908. It was originally known as the Thompson Manufacturing Company — and later changed to “Structo Manufacturing” in 1911 — a play on the “inde-structo-ble quality of their steel building sets. Their motto was “Structo toys makes men of boys!” – and some of their earliest toys were steel construction kits - forerunners of the “Erector” set. Included in some of the builder sets were roadsters and trucks, launching many years of pressed steel vehicle toys produced all the way into the 1950s and 60s.

1960s Tonka dump truck, pressed steel - with tin cat pull toy

Tonka Toys

Mound Metalcraft was created in Mound, Minnesota in 1946 by three partners; Lynn Everett Baker, Avery F. Crounse, and Alvin F. Tesch. Their original idea was to manufacture garden implements. The building’s former occupant, the Streater Company, had made and patented several toys. E.C. Streater was not interested in the toy business so they approached Mound Metalcraft to buy the company. The three men at Mound Metalcraft thought the toys might make a good side line to their other products.

After some modifications to the design and the addition of a new logo with the Dakota Sioux word “Tanka” or Tonka, which means “Great” or “Big”, the company began selling metal toys. This soon became the primary business. In 1955 Mound Metalcraft changed its name to Tonka Toys, Incorporated. The logo at this time was an oval – showing the Tonka Toys name in red above waves – presumably honoring nearby Lake Minnetonka.

The impact of the Tonka truck concept has been enduring and pervasive, especially the Mighty Dump Truck and associated “Mighty” line of construction equipment models introduced from 1964. The all-metal “Tonka Trucks” were sold throughout the world and earned a reputation as being indestructible, although the steel has been increasingly replaced by plastic from the late 1980s onwards.

First Impressions

before

after - including the settee and barometer

Every winter we keep our maintenance man Steve busy by renovating a room in the museum. In all of the rooms and halls, with the exception of the third floor ballroom, the wallpaper dates to some time in the 1950s or 60s - it is dingy and repaired in places. The tired old wallpaper does nothing to accent the collection or the wonderful building details and construction. So we remove the paper and choose an appropriate paint color - and then move objects around to fit the space and the theme of the room or hall better. Often the pictures on the walls seem haphazardly hung so this is our opportunity to bring an aesthetic eye to the walls and to create a more inviting and lovely room.

looking north - before

after... this little south hall holds the Battle of Plattsburgh exhibit

After finishing renovation of the third floor last winter, this winter we moved to the first floor hall and Steve renovated this very important space over the months of January, February and March. The results are stunning. The collection shines and the hall is so inviting now! I have taken the liberty of placing the wall objects so they relate better to the furniture and themes. I have also moved a few pieces that were easily overlooked in their previous homes, such as the handsome barometer.

below the stairs - before

after

Along with new paint and a fresh view, we have the newly conserved settee back from Williamstown Art Conservation Center. It is a George III carved mahogany settee from 1820 that has received a new show cover of crisp black hair cloth. You can read about the process and what the conservators discovered in my Wednesday, October 2, 2013 post, ‘Touring the Settee’. Stay tuned for a post about the completed settee. And come in for a tour! We are open Tuesday - Saturday with tours at 10am, Noon and 2pm.

look at the lovely settee!

For the Bookish

Today would be a great day to find a shady seat and relax with a good book. Perhaps Alice Miner, after finishing her needle work, would have wandered from Heart's Delight Cottage toward a stately elm tree and cracked open a good book. It's clear she enjoyed reading - as evidenced by the large collection of her books here at The Alice. She read about many things - fiction, history, reference, biographies, travel journals... Much of her non-fiction collection deals with how things were made. Specifically, the books are about china, American furniture, English furniture, decorative arts, Japanese woodblock prints, porcelain maker's marks, silver, silver maker's marks - in other words, she read a lot about the objects she collected. These books are part of our reference library at the museum, as opposed to books that are part of the collection - Alice Miner gathered some amazing and sometimes rare books together to preserve in the museum collection.

Lately I have been revisiting some of the more extraordinary books Alice collected. Here I will tell you about six of them, organized by publication date from 1914 all the way back to 1498. They are just a few of the amazing tomes stored in my office and I love to occasionally take them down from the shelves and carefully wander through their pages. Right now you can see them exhibited on the first floor in the Weaving Room.

A Century of Fashions from Contemporary Magazines 1800 to 1900 by M.J. Levey, 1914
Includes 100 hand-colored engraved costume plates representing a century of ladies fashions from magazines of the time. 

Atlas to Cruttwell's Gazetteer by Clement Cruttwell, 1808
A gazetteer is a geographical directory or reference for information about places and place names, population GDP, etc. - used in conjunction with an atlas or maps. Cruttwell's Gazetteer is an atlas of the known world including numerous maps. Clement Cruttwell was well-regarded in his time and even corresponded with George Washington - to whom he sent his own translation of the Holy Bible. Our copy of this book is inscribed "Levi Platt Esquire", indicating perhaps that Alice Miner purchased the book from descendants of the Platt family as she did numerous other pieces in the collection. Levi Platt (1782-1849) was a son of Zephaniah (1735-1807) and Mary Van Wyck Platt (1742-1809). 

Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, 1768 by Jonathan Carver, 1781
The journal of Jonathan Carver's expedition into the interior of America. Carver (1710-1780) traveled further west than any British explorer before the Revolution. Illustrated with copper engravings. Carver was a captain in the Massachusetts colonial militia during the French and Indian war, enlisting in 1755. His expedition was sponsored by Major Robert Rogers (1731-1795 - of Roger's Rangers fame) with an aim to find a western water route to the Pacific Ocean. Despite the immense success of the book, Carver died a poor man in London in 1780.

The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director by Thomas Chippendale, 1754
A furniture pattern book illustrated with 161 engravings of Chippendale's own designs. He was the first furniture maker to publish a book of his own creations. The book includes furniture patterns in the Gothic, Chinese, and Rococo styles along with more plain domestic designs. The drawings established the fashion for furniture for the period and were used by many other cabinet makers. The term "Chippendale" is now regularly used to describe English Rococo furniture. This book sold well and helped to increase Chippendale's clientele. 

A Treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations compiled and edited by Benjamin Franklin, 1744
Also known as the Treaty of Lancaster between Virginia, Maryland and the Iroquois League. This is an original copy of the treaty published and sold by Ben Franklin from his printing office in Philadelphia. These treaty negotiations were held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania between June 25 and July 4, 1744. The Iroquois agreed to hand over their claims to the Shenandoah Valley in exchange for 200 pounds of gold. The demarcation lines were vague and not agreed upon by all parties, resulting in later treaties. Although the leather binding is a more recent addition, I like to think that perhaps Ben himself once held this book!

Enneades ab Urbe Condito ad Inclinationem Imperii Romani (History of the World) by Marcus Antonius (Coccius) Sabellicus (1436-1506), 1498
A history of the world from its inception to 1504. Published by Bernardinus and Mattheus de Vitalibus, commonly called Li Albanesoti, who were brothers. This is the only book they published together. They were active between 1494-1536 in Venice and Rome. Their printer's mark is shown below.

It is interesting that this history supposedly covers through the year 1504 when it was published in 1498. It is decorated with woodcut outline initials that have been hand colored, and printed in Latin. This wonderful book was purchased by Alice Miner from her friend and fellow collector, Frank Gunsaulus in 1919. 

Please come to see these amazing objects here at The Alice. Due to their delicate nature they will be on exhibit for only a short time and then carefully boxed and stowed away again in my office.

It's the Little Things...

A few recent additions at the museum have made it possible to exhibit for the first time in many years some objects Alice Miner collected. We now have a dress that probably belonged to Mrs. Miner exhibited on a simple mannequin in the Miner Room on the third floor. 

Another display addition is a glass case for jewelry and small objects. This lighted case is on display in the Sheraton Room on the second floor of The Alice. In it you will see many pieces of jewelry, small objects from the children's room - including miniature books and tiny dolls, bakelite jewelry, lockets, eyeglasses and more.

These shoe buckles are said to have belonged to the third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson.

One of the few necklaces in The Alice collection this is an Egyptian scarab piece made of gold, turquoise and other carved stones. It has a matching scarab bracelet. Although Alice Miner and her sisters traveled in Egypt we do not know where she purchased these lovely adornments.

Two pair of 19th century eyeglasses. One was worn by Mrs. Betsey Persons of Rochester, Vermont. The other pair (forefront) belonged to Judge Chew of Richland County, Ohio. The leather glasses case in back also belonged to Mrs. Persons.

A 19th century amethyst and gold pin. There are two sets of earrings to match this bright pin. In back is a french carved ivory pen point holder from the mid-19th century.

Brown and black bakelite earring and pin set. Bakelite was one of the first synthetic plastics - this set likely dates to the early 20th century. Along with these wonderful objects are many more small things to catch your imagination. Come for a tour sometime and see them for yourself. The Alice is open Tuesday - Saturday with tours at 10am, noon and 2pm.