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  Featuring approximately 18,000 objects in media ranging from silver and glass to wood, porcelain, and textile, the Gallery’s American decorative arts collection is among the finest in the United States. Its particular strengths are in the colonial and early federal periods, due in large part to generous gifts from Francis P. Garvan, B.A. 1897. The furniture collection comprises outstanding examples of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth-century work. In addition to the pieces displayed in the gallery, more than 1,000 examples can be seen by appointment in the Furniture Study. Yale’s collection of early silver is noted for superior examples from New England, New York, and Philadelphia. A major addition to the collection occurred in the 1980s, when Carl R. Kossack, B.S. 1931, M.A. 1933, and his family donated more than 7,000 pieces of American silver, with particular concentrations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Also present in the American decorative arts collection are significant holdings in pewter and other metals, as well as glass, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper. In recent decades, acquisitions have focused on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century objects.





Patricia E. Kane patricia.kane@yale.edu
Patricia E. Kane, the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts, has been at the Gallery since receiving her M.A. from the University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, in 1968. She received her Ph.D. from Yale in 1987. She oversees collections from the seventeenth century to the present and pursues research on early American silver and furniture. Download curriculum vitae.
John Stuart Gordon john.s.gordon@yale.edu
John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts, first encountered material culture at Vassar College. He received a M.A. from the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture and is writing his dissertation for Boston University on designer Lurelle Guild. His specialty is American design from the late nineteenth through twenty-first centuries. In addition, he supervises Furniture Study, the Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects. Download curriculum vitae.
 

Barquist, David L. American and English Pewter at the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985.

Barquist, David L. American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

Battison, Edwin A., and Patricia E. Kane. The American Clock 1725–1865: The Mabel Brady Garvan Collection and Other Collections at Yale University. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society Limited, 1973.

Buhler, Kathryn C., and Graham Hood. American Silver: Garvan and Other Collections in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970.

Dennis A. Carr, American Colonial Furniture, an Interpretive Guide to the Yale University Art Gallery's Collection. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2004. Download PDF (file is 664KB)-->

Freedman, Paula B., and Robin Jaffee Frank. American Sculpture at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992.

Hood, Graham. “American Pewter: Garvan and Other Collections at Yale.” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1965.

Kane, Patricia E. 300 Years of American Seating Furniture: Chairs and Beds from the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976.

Phillips, John Marshall. Early American Silver Selected from the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection. Ed. Meyric R. Rogers. New Haven: Yale University Art Center, 1960.

Ward, Barbara McLean, and Gerald W. R. Ward. Silver in American Life: Selections from the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University. New York and Boston: American Federation of Arts, 1979.

Ward, Gerald W. R. American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.