Two Plates, 1940

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It has been able to spend time at the museum on loan from Virginia Bayer.

Included in Mergentime’s personal collection of American folk art was a mid-19th-century ink drawing of a horse, which she used extensively in the textiles and plates that were part of her 1939 Folk Art series. She signed this collection “edited by Marguerita Mergentime” to give credit to the unknown artisans who created these motifs. The cat plates were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum Contemporary American Industrial Art exhibition in 1940, and the horse plates were shown at the 1939 New York World’s Fair as part of the America at Home exhibition.