The Galleries

In Style
In Style offers an overview of the characteristics that distinguish the eight major design styles popular in America between 1640 and 1860. Glancing along the length of the gallery, the visitor can see how specific objects changed in response to fashion: How a picture frame became more or less ornate, how chairs became more comfortable, or how textile design responded to fashionable imagery. Each period vignette has similar objects, but the changes in line, color, and ornamentation illustrate a particular fashionable taste, creating an excellent introduction to American decorative arts.

In Wood
The In Wood display presents aspects of Winterthur's world-renowned furniture collection. A cabinetmaker's chest of tools, samples of raw materials, and designers' pattern books introduce the visitor to the techniques and taste choices that were part of the cabinetmaking process. A wall of chairs dating from the 1750s to the 1850s illustrates both regional and chronological developments in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. An area devoted to changing displays ensures that visitors benefit from current research projects and learn something new on every visit.

Textiles & Needlework
Textiles were one of Henry Francis du Pont's first loves. From quilts to gowns, needlework pictures to bedcovers, Winterthur has some of the finest works of textile art made or used in America. The gallery opens with "Fashions and Furnishings," featuring 18th-century gowns, bed hangings, and slip covers; all were expensive textiles that identified a person's taste, cultural background, and wealth. Displays of quilted, woven, and printed textiles culminate in "Needlework: Plain and Fancy," which highlights embroidery, lacework, and samplers. Because of the light-sensitive nature of these objects, textile displays change regularly, making repeat visits a must.

Paintings & Prints
Visitors often think of Winterthur as a decorative arts museum and are therefore surprised to discover the caliber of works on display in this gallery. Many of the paintings, prints, and drawings on view have not been seen for decades. The display includes important paintings--such as John Singleton Copley's portrait The Gore Children and a spectacular painting, Jerusha Benedict by Ralph Earl--together with18th- and 19th-century prints from Winterthur's comprehensive collection.The gallery also highlights the techniques used to create a variety of prints through the display of tools and copper plates. In addition, a changing display of watercolor sketches by John Lewis Krimmel depicts day-to-day life in early 19th-century Philadelphia. From colorful Fraktur (elaborate, decorated documents produced by the Pennsylvania Germans) to the sophisticated portrait paintings of America's favorite sons and daughters, the collection holds many wonderful surprises.

Metalworks
The metals gallery includes displays of silver, brass, and iron that illustrate how metals were formed into useful and beautiful objects. The displays explore the properties of different metals to discover what makes them suitable for one purpose but unusable for other uses. Art and industry unite in this gallery to delight and inform the visitor. From the simple elegance of a Paul Revere silver bowl to the glorious ostentation of a Victorian gas chandelier, this gallery highlights the metals that were so integral and essential to the life of early Americans.

Ceramics & Glass
The ceramics and glass gallery showcases the remarkable survivors of these fragile art forms. Examples from Winterthur's extensive holdings of American glass and English, Chinese, French, and American ceramics are used to explore themes relating to production techniques, trade, and changes in consumers' tastes. Visitors can study the products of early American glassmakers, learn how to distinguish between earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain, and set a fashionable tea table. During the year, displays change to focus on new themes.

A special display features the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur, a donation of more than 200 pieces of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain made for the European and American market between 1550 and 1900.

The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens
The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens at Winterthur is a permanent exhibition on display in Winterthur's Dorrance Gallery. This treasure trove of artfully crafted tureens in fascinating forms captivates young and old alike. From rabbits to cauliflowers, rococo to classical, these impressive objects took pride of place on lavish dining tables of the past.

These sculpted metals, precious porcelains, and elegant earthenwares made and admired in Europe, Asia, and North and South America, have survived revolutions. Great history and beauty endure in this extraordinary assemblage of tureens and soup-related items generously donated to Winterthur by the Campbell Museum. Delight in objects made for royal palaces, presidential homes, and aristocratic mansions. Compare and contrast cultures and learn why the English say, "Of Soup and Love, the first is best."

Dominy Shops
When we look at antique furniture in a museum or in someone's home, we often admire its appearance and the skill with which it was made but rarely consider who made it. Who were these craftsmen? What were the tools and techniques of their trade?

The Dominy Clock Shop and Woodworking Shop are reconstructions of shops used by the Dominy family, four generations of craftsmen who worked in East Hampton, New York, from the mid 1700s to the mid 1800s. Historic photographs and architectural drawings document the working environment of these rural Long Island artists. Surviving objects representative of their work--clocks, chairs, case pieces, looking glasses, and tables--reveal their local clientele's taste for conservatively styled, well-crafted household furnishings. Displayed with those objects are the templates, machinery, and more than 800 tools used to produce them, a collection that provides a rare opportunity to glimpse the typical working environment of rural craftsmen more than two centuries ago.