Browse Items (24 total)

Students, almshouse residents, and homemakers all crafted buttons out of cleaned cow bones. The carving required few tools and little skill. The incomplete button blank on the center of this board still shows a fragment of the larger bone from which…

Sugar boxes held sugar to sweeten tea and coffee or to make unpalatable wine drinkable. This nearly-intact pearlware example from the early 1800s has a hand-painted garland design.

Salt-glazed earthware jars replaced lead-glazed vessels for food storage as the dangers of lead became common knowledge. Once filled, treated paper or cloth formed a seal over the open mouth. Cookbooks in the nineteenth century recommended these jars…

Henry Stiegel’s distinctive thin-walled drinking glasses became popular in the Philadelphia area after his emigration from Germany in 1750. His technique spread to other glasshouses after his death. Pieces in the style were sometimes produced at the…

The “Willow” pattern of this teaware piece imitates the designs used on Chinese porcelain that became popular imports in the nineteenth century. A number of American firms utilized the pattern or a variation of it in their designs.

The “Willow” pattern of this teaware piece imitates the designs used on Chinese porcelain that became popular imports in the nineteenth century. A number of American firms utilized the pattern or a variation of it in their designs.

Three Charles Joly beer bottles were uncovered during the Cooper Street dig. The bottle not only represents the growth of beer production in the United States, it also shows how the nation was expanding with new innovations that allowed for the…

A variety of unlabeled medicinal bottles were discovered in the Cooper Street dig, including this small glass bottle. It could have held a number of liquids used to heal a number of ailments. It would have been kept with others of its kind in the…

Discovered alongside many other items of its kind, this object was identified as a food preparation and storage vessel. Its circular base and wide open top suggests that it was used for preparation over storage - it was not found with an airtight lid…

Straight pins filled a number of needs in the nineteenth-century household. Women used them to sew clothes and fasten baby diapers, and men used them to fasten documents before the invention of the staple. The thimble protected the pointer finger…