Design Meriden at artdesigncafé

Tremaine Miller Co Meriden Bradley & Hubbard stand Meriden Wilcox mansion Meriden Napier Company penguin Meriden
Meriden Britannia buffalo hunt sculpture Bradley & Hubbard candlestick holders Meriden Wilcox Silver Plate Co urn Meriden Miller Co Painting toward architecture Burle-Marx Meriden
Johnson face Miller Co Meriden Wilcox Silver Plate Co tea set Meriden Miller Co Meriden Mondrian International Silver Company theater Hollywood Meriden
Do you know how the artworks and designs shown above relate to the historical Meriden area? If not, click the photos and be directed to sources where you can learn more.


Join us in the design discovery

Design Meriden at artdesigncafe is the leading 24/7 disseminator of information focused on accomplished historical art and design from the area of Meriden, Connecticut, USA (1860-1965). Its objects from this era are collected by museums nationally and internationally and numbering over 2000. These works also have been featured in over 200 exhibitions in the USA and abroad since the 1850s.

The Meriden area was especially known for the high-quality production of Victorian and Art Nouveau silver, Art Brass, and Modernist silver and chrome ware— as well as the discussion-generating Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art exhibition across America [1947-52; 28(+) venues] and associated cross-disciplinary design projects, the art/design book publisher Meriden Gravure, and Meriden’s International Silver (Company) Theater in Hollywood (c. 1937-50), among other accomplishments and design innovations.

Through specialist academic research, professional communications and this online platform, Design Meriden administered by artdesigncafe has helped facilitate a new, recent wave of appreciation and discoveries, from globally to locally. We also actively lobby to make important, rare, historical material more easily accessible to curators, researchers and enthusiasts— and more widely available via the internet. See Wikipedia’s Meriden page for a quick overview of the region’s achievements. And join us in the design discovery.

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Meriden-area design in museum exhibitions

From New York to Los Angeles, from London to Lisbon, from Paris to Rio de Janeiro and Melbourne, Australia, historical Meriden design has been spotlighted in over 200 museum and exposition shows since at least 1853.

2017-18
The jazz age: American style in the 1920s at Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (7 April - 20 August 2017); and Cleveland Museum of Art (30 September 2017 - 14 January 2018). (Meriden Silver Plate Co.; Napier Company; R. Wallace & Sons; Wilcox Silver Plate Co. / International Silver Company)

2016-18
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist at Jewish Museum, New York (6 May - 18 September 2016); Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, Germany (7 July - 8 October 2017); and Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (November 2017 - March 2018). [Exhibiting 3 "Tremaine House"-related works, c. 1948, associated with the Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art (1947-52)]

MAY 17 - ongoing
Style and status in sterling: American silver at the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey (International Silver Company, Wallace Silversmiths, Wilcox Silver Plate Co.)

18 NOV 16 - 12 NOV 17
Shaken, stirred, styled: The art of the cocktail at Dallas Museum of Art (Charter Company; Derby Silver Company; International Silver Company; Napier Company; R. Wallace & Sons; Wilcox & Evertsen Fine Arts)

27 AUG 16 - 21 MAY 17
JapanAmerica: Points of contact, 1876-1970 at Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY and Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA (Charles Parker Company; Meriden Britannia; and Meriden Silver Plate Co.)

> See the historical Meriden design exhibition list

Meriden-area design at auction

Some historical objects from the Meriden area do rather well at auction. Check out some of the auction results below.

See Design Meriden magazine issues online

Design Meriden 1(2)

  • > Check out our "Modernism in Meriden" issue, featuring an interview of Jewel Stern, a Miami-based curator / writer / collector who put Modernist silver from Meriden-Wallingford on the national stage. Learn about the spectacular 28(+)-venue Painting toward architecture exhibition, from US coast to coast, organized by the Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art (1947-52). Plus check out the grand presentation of Wilcox Silver Plate Co. / ISC designs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1934.

Design Meriden 1(1)

  • > Read about the B&H crisis state, the Wilcox mansion, the noteworthy Cambridge-Tremont Street area, the Tremaines and Philip Johnson. Plus check out the floating proposal to thoroughly inform culturally-interested Meriden area high school students about the area's acclaimed art/design legacy. See Design Meriden 1(1).

See our extensively researched compilations ft. historical Meriden-area / ISC design

A. Miller Co. - B. ISC - C. Other featured companies - D. Featured early silversmiths - E. Other makers


B. ISC, predecessors & divisions


ISC predecessors & divisions


C. Other featured companies


E. Other historical Meriden area companies to explore

Brass articles

  • > W. H. Chapman Co. (brass articles)
  • > H. L. Judd & Co. (brass goods, upholsterer hardware
  • > Peerless Mfg. Company (brass articles)

    • Ceramics

  • > Metallic Potters Co. (unknown output)
  • > New England Pottery Company (unknown output)

    • Clocks

  • > Parker & Whipple Co.

    • Currency issued by Meriden bank (c. 1865)

    Curtain fixtures, lamp shades (and leather cases)

    Firearms

    Glass makers

    Industrial design - various

    Ivory combs and bone-handled cutlery

    Jewelry

    Music sector

    Printing sector

    Silversmiths

  • Early silversmiths


    • Mission of Design Meriden

    Historical designers and entrepreneurs FIRST, because it is about their work, not ours-- that's our focus. We see ourselves as partly addressing some decades-long, regional access, gatekeeping and dissemination challenges that have structurally held back the historical discourse development of the area's accomplished entrepreneurs and designers. We advocate for easier access to rare material, professionalism, and we are absolutely anti-gatekeeping for personal gain-- which pro-actively damages the legacies of designers and entrepreneurs. We also advocate for more contemporary-like communications of historical designers with information more reasonably accessible and even immediately available to anyone that is interested, anywhere globally, at any time.

    Communicating international art and design has been our result-driven focus for over 25 years. We bring these approaches to the historical, and to historical Meriden area companies and designers in particular, because they deserve this. They, at times, produced unexpected and exceptional magic. Their accomplishments must become more fully known. Join us, in paying tribute to their work. Join us, in the design discovery.

    Read more: Design Meriden articles; Lutz Co., Meriden, CT; Parker & Whipple Co., Meriden, CT; Rockwell Silver Company, Meriden, CT; 1847 Rogers Brothers; ADC staff; Aeolian Company, Meriden operation; Aetna Cut Glass, Meriden, CT; Joel Allen, silversmith, Southington & Middletown, CT; American Automatic Lighting Company; American Silver Company, Bristol, CT; American Silverplate Company; Samuel Babcock, silversmith, Middletown, CT ; H. C. Baldwin Cut Glass Company, Meriden, CT; L. G. Baldwin, Meriden, CT; Barbour Bros. Co.; Barbour Hobson Co.; Barbour Silver Company, Hartford, CT; Clement Beecher, silversmith, Meriden, CT; Bergen & Niland, Meriden, CT (1882-85); J.D. Bergen Co., Meriden, CT (1885-1922); Darius Bingham, Jr., silversmith, Meriden, CT; E. A. Bliss Co.