About

This blog documents the search for objects to include in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, an online archive of decorative arts objects–furniture, ceramics, textiles, and metalwork–made in Wisconsin between 1820 and 1920. The database brings together, in digital form, artifacts from museums and historical societies across the state, creating a new resource for the study of state and local history, craft traditions, industry, and material culture. 

Support
The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database is a collaboration of three institutions: the Chipstone Foundation, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Material Culture Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Chipstone Foundation funds the project via the Charles Hummel Fellowship. The Wisconsin Historical Society provides technical support as well as hardware and software resources, and the Material Culture Program provides resources for decorative arts research.

Inspiration
The project was inspired by the innovative fieldwork undertaken by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in the 1970s and 1980s to document thousands of early regional artifacts and craftspeople in seven southern states, creating an indispensable research archive for the study of southern history and material culture. The Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database project seeks to develop a similar resource for the state of Wisconsin, taking MESDA’s template into the digital age through a publicly-accessible online database. Working closely with each contributing site, I select and photograph objects, research their histories, and document them with detailed catalog records.

About Me
My name is Emily Pfotenhauer and I’ve been the Project Coordinator for the database and Chipstone’s Hummel Fellow since July 2006.  Although the contributions of a huge number of people and institutions are essential for this project to happen, on a day-to-day basis it’s a one-person operation.  That means I’m the photographer, data entry clerk, metadata specialist, liaison to supporting organizations, and driver (I’ve logged over 10,000 miles driving all over the state since the project began).

In the summer of 2005, I was about to start my final year of graduate school in the master’s program of the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it was time for me to choose a thesis topic. I knew I wanted my research to involve fieldwork, and I knew that I wanted to study Wisconsin objects in order to look at the things around me in new ways. On the suggestion of my advisor in the Material Culture Program, Professor Ann Smart Martin, I looked to locally-made 19^th century furniture in my hometown of Mineral Point.

During the year I spent researching and writing my thesis, I met many people who were happy to share their furniture, their time, and their expertise with me. I turned over chairs, crawled under tables with a flashlight, and took hundreds of photos. My findings caught the attention of Jon Prown, director of the Chipstone Foundation, and when I finished my paper and earned my M.A. in May 2006, Chipstone offered me the opportunity to continue and expand my research through a fellowship award. Suddenly my net was huge—my focus would not be furniture in a single town, but furniture, textiles, ceramics, and more, all over the state.