Women and Early America in the Hume Furniture Study

Women’s domestic roles and educational opportunities in colonial America and the early United States influenced the types of objects they used, valued, and created. This virtual tour with John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts, and Rebecca Tannenbaum, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, explores a selection of works with particularly rich and detailed histories in the Leslie P. and George H. Hume, B.A. 1969, American Furniture Study Center. These varied objects—ranging from a 17th-century carved chest to a 19th-century terrestrial globe—provide insights into the lives these women led and the greater landscape of social conventions and gendered expectations.