Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

1905

  • Work on this object ended.

2022

2025

  • You found it!

Ledger

This is a Ledger. It was written by Eleanor Garnier Hewitt. It is dated ca. 1900. Its medium is ink on bound paper. It is a part of the department.

This ledger, maintained by Eleanor, documents purchases of books from the sisters’ travels that were then repurposed to create the encyclopedic visual scrapbooks, following the practice of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

The Hewitt sisters modeled their encyclopedic scrapbooks after the Jules Maciet albums in Paris, adapting the concept of a visual library to the needs of their American museum users. Maciet (1846–1911) collected and classified images around an encyclopedic model which covered varied fields of design. When Maciet died in 1911, the library had 3,500 albums.

It is credited Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Its dimensions are

H x W (Closed, estimated): 25.4 × 12.7 cm (10 × 5 in.)

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Sarah & Eleanor Hewitt: Designing a Modern Museum.

There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian’s Terms of Use page.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/2318805833/ |title=Ledger |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=19 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>