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| Home | Articles | Winterthur Primer: The Winterthur Library, An Invaluable Resource |
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by E. Richard McKinstry
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Most people think of the library at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum as a resource for advanced scholarship. While this is true, it is also a great deal more. Increasingly in the last few years, we have welcomed new users, either in person or by e-mail, who come to us because we can provide background information on what they collect or documentation that reveals how their ancestors lived.
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Drawing of alcove drapery, ca. 1845, Gillow & Company (Lancaster, England). Ink and watercolor wash.
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Book-Case, Thomas Sheraton, The Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer, and General Artists’ Encyclopedia (London: By the author, 1804–1807. Hand-colored engraving.
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Drawing of window drapery, ca. 1845,
Gillow & Company. Ink and watercolor wash.
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The library has four different sections. The Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals, one of the most important in the country relating to decorative arts and material culture, contains what its name suggests; the Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, named to honor Winterthur’s first curator, holds rare documents of everyday life and original archival material; the Visual Resources Collection, principally the Decorative Arts Photographic Collection (DAPC), the only such resource of its kind, contains modern photographs of decorative and fine arts objects; and the Winterthur Archives is the corporate memory of the museum.
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Drawing of chairs, Duncan Phyfe, New York, 1816. Iron gall ink and graphite.
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Winterthur library’s strength is in its holdings of materials that chronicle the household and the activities that occurred there. Our collection of trade catalogues, for example, records the full array of products, including furniture, glassware, lighting fixtures, carpeting, fabric—the list goes on—offered to the public during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Colorful trade cards and postcard sized advertisements supplement these catalogues.
Several years ago, we began to take advantage of the Internet and the widespread communication it makes possible. The library’s electronic catalogue (www.winterthur.org/wintercat) contains upwards of 90,000 bibliographical records of our printed, archival, and photographic holdings. In addition, we have nearly 350 finding aids online, describing the contents of our archival resources. ISeeDAPC is another resource (www.winterthur.org/iseedapc) available online. It features thousands of images and data on individual craftspeople and what they made.
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Fisher’s improved house-keeper’s almanac and family receipt book (Philadelphia: Fisher & Brother, 1853). Imprint.
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Among those discovering our resources was an American on the faculty of Lund University in Sweden. She had just conducted an Internet search for Nathan Margolis, a furniture maker in Hartford, Connecticut, during most of the twentieth century. Among her results was a reference to our archival collection of Margolis shop records. She read it with interest, hoping that we had his sales books, since her grandparents had purchased several pieces of furniture from Margolis in the early 1930s, and she was curious to know which pieces they were. We did indeed have the sale books, and were able to give her particulars about the furniture her grandparents had purchased and what they had paid.
More recently, a descendant of Lewis Palm, a seller of tin goods near Columbus, Ohio, in the 1880s, contacted us. She was eager to find out about her grandfather’s life, and we were able to help in her research, since we had a manuscript account book belonging to Palm in the collection. Being able to supply the missing pieces of the puzzle in these instances is what helps make our work at the library so rewarding.
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Former Winterthur library director Katharine Martinez once remarked that the library collection was “an assemblage that researchers can pursue and interpret in ways limited only by the sorts of questions they ask of it.” Accordingly, we welcome anyone who is interested in using our library for research, and we look forward to making many new acquaintances. To readers who would like to reach us by e-mail, please do so at: reference@winterthur.org.
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E. Richard McKinstry is the Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware.
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