Winterthur Museum

V. F. Hanson Analytical Laboratory, Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Del. 19735... 

T he Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, which has two - -hundred period rooms and display areas of American furniture and furnishings on a beautiful 960-acre, park-like estate, dedicated the Louise Crowinshield Research Wing in 1969. A research and analytical laboratory, it was to provide facilities and techniques to determine the chemical composition of the thousands of objects in the Collection. 

This study was funded in part by a grant from the National Museum Act and by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. A recent grant from the National Science Foundation will support additional work that will be under the guidance of the conservation laboratories of The Library of Congress, the National Archives, The Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Winterthur Museum. 

Figure 1. View of Winterthur House from the east, 1902-28, as it appeared when Henry Francis du Pont inherited it. Courtesy, The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.

Winterthur Museum objects other than large pieces of furniture, mirrors, and paintings, the Director of the Museum being empowered to make the decision in the case of each request as to what shall or shall not be loaned requests for large pieces of furniture, mirrors, and paintings shall be referred to the Board in the event that requests are received from some very special exhibition. 

Henry Francis du Pont in the last two decades of his life emphasized the expanding role of education at Winterthur Museum. He revealed this evolution of thought in the 1962 interview with Phillips (2) ... 

Henry Francis du Pont, Letters and Notes to Executors and Winterthur Directors Concerning The Winterthur Museum and Winterthur House , various revisions 1945 to 1966, Winterthur Archives, Special File. 

Charles F. Montgomery was Director of Winterthur Museum from 1954 to 1961, when he became Senior Research Associate and then Senior Research Fellow, Instructor and Museum Liaison Officer. He was active in teaching and publishing at Winterthur until 1970 when he accepted the position of Curator of the Mabel Brady Garvan and Related Collections of American Art and Professor of Art History at Yale University. 

Report on studies made at Winterthur Museum by H. J. Plenderleith, July 1958, Winterthur Archives, Charles Montgomery Papers, Box 274, Plenderleith . 

E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Engineering Department, Design Division, May 9, 1960, Feasibility of Air Conditioning Winterthur Museum W.R. 425560 , prepared by M. G. Kershaw, filed in Winterthur Archives, Charles Montgomery Papers, Box 563, Air-Conditioning Survey . 

The Louise du Pont Crowninshield Research Building at The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Dedicated 12 May 1969 , Winterthur, Delaware, 1969. 

Problems of classification of 18th century painted-printed Chinese and Western silk textiles are discussed with emphasis on how nondestructive X-ray fluorescent (XRF) analyses of pigment-dye pastes and paints can be combined with visually observable physical characteristics, painterly techniques, and art historical research to separate Chinese silks from Western ones. This unique documentation process is the result of our joint, 2-year study and shows how textile connoisseurship can be reinforced with scientific data. Thirty painted-printed 18th century silks from the textile and costume collections of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Musee Historique des Tissus in Lyon, France National Museum of American History Philadelphia Museum of Art Rhode Island Historical Society and The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum were examined and analyzed by XRF for this study. 

Figure I. Western chinoiserie design on an 18th century French painted-printed silk moire. (Acc. No. 57.1277, courtesy of The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.)...

The analyses were performed at The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum on a Kevex 4525P energy dispersive XRF spectrometer low-level radioactive isotopes were used for the incident radiation (4). The pigment area analyzed was successively irradiated by an iron-55 source, an americium-241 source, and a cadmium-109 source. A qualitative pigment analysis takes only 6 min. Neither the coloring matter nor the silk fabric is altered in any way by the measurement. Figure 8 shows our XRF system setup for the analysis of pigments on painted and printed silks. 

XRF analyses were performed on the pigments of 22 Chinese and 8 Western painted and printed silks from the silk and costume collections of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Musee Histo-rique des Tissus in Lyon, France National Museum of American History Philadelphia Museum of Art Rhode Island Historical Society and The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. 

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