Elizabeth Parke Firestone (1897-1990) was destined to develop a refined sense of fashion. Born the daughter of a wealthy Decatur, Ill., businessman, she was given the opportunity to study in Europe in her mid-teens. Through this adventure she developed a deep appreciation for French culture, particularly French decorative arts. She also nurtured a lifelong love of dancing, which influenced not only her fashion sense but her choice of spouse.
Elizabeth met Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., at a dance. Their 1921 wedding was the union of two well-established business families, and their celebration was the most lavish Decatur had ever seen. It began a 52-year marriage, during which the couple raised four children at "Twin Oaks," their Akron, Ohio, home. They also maintained homes in New York City and Newport, R.I.
Elizabeth's background prepared her well for her role of representing her husband and family in the most influential business and social circles of the time. She joined her husband on business trips, traveling the United States, Europe and Asia throughout their marriage. She looked to both the New York and Paris fashion scenes to find couturiers who met her style standards, then worked through both correspondence and visits to modify their designs to fit her best features.
Elizabeth was meticulous about her looks, leaving no detail unattended. Her fair skin became radiant when she wore pinks and blues, and most of her clothing can be found in variations of these shades. Multiple matching gloves, shoes, purses and hats were commissioned for each outfit, so that replacements would be readily available in case of damage.
Trim, blonde and blue-eyed, Elizabeth looked stunning in designer gowns and was frequently photographed for fashion and society magazines. Well into her 50s her fashions were the talk of society, and her style-both classy and classic-was frequently noted in the press. In the 1950s she was named one of the "Best Dressed Women in the World" by the Couture Group of the New York Dress Institute along with the Duchess of Windsor and Hollywood actresses including Olivia de Havilland.
Prior to her death, Elizabeth and her family realized that the clothing she owned offered a rich and sweeping view of fashion history to future generations, and a large segment of her wardrobe was donated to The Henry Ford. Today that collection includes more than 1,000 dresses, shoes, gloves and other accessories, from early home-sewn creations including her wedding dress to custom-made American and European designer fashions. Each dress is truly a work of art, crafted by inventive couturiers for a patron who not only collaborated on the result, but well understood the contribution each made to the life of her family and the society of the day.
At The Henry Ford, Conservation’s job is to maintain artifacts as close to original condition as possible while also ensuring access. The Dymaxion House is a fairly fragile aluminum structure, and a very popular exhibit, which makes preservation a little bit of a challenge.
Last year we did some rather major surgery on the Dymaxion House. We opened up the floor and patched all 96 aluminum floor beams to reinforce them where many had developed cracks.
As I explained in past blog posts, linked below, the damages were found primarily on the heavy-traffic side of the house, where our guests walk through. The repair job in 2012 took two months of hard work.
After all that effort, how do we ensure that this kind of damage won’t progress?
This year we are setting up some cool monitoring devices that will help us understand the house better.
All metal structures move. We want to figure out how our beams are moving, and whether the structure can continue to withstand the forces we apply to it.
Under the guidance of our own engineer, Richard Jeryan, who is retired from Ford Motor Company, and with the generous assistance of Ford Senior Chassis Test Engineer Dave Friske and two skilled technicians, Instrumentation Expert Walter Milewsky and Fastener Lab Technician Richard Talbott, we are installing stress and strain gauges along with crack detection and propagation gauges.
These gauges are the kind of very precise instrument used by engineers to find out how structures perform. They are used to test automobile parts (even ones as small as bolts) during design, and are also used on buildings and bridges.
Strain gauges are used to measure the amount of deformation (strain) when a building is loaded. Put another way, stress is a measurement of the load on a material, strain is a measure of the change in the shape of the object that is undergoing stress. We will be recording a baseline stress on the beams with the house empty of people and collecting our strain data on a busy week in the museum (like the Fouth of July!).
The crack detection gauges will alert us to a crack that is starting, and the propagation gauges will tell us how quickly a new crack is progressing.
These tiny devices are glued onto the beams and wires soldered onto them so that electrical resistance can be monitored with special equipment. Engineers gather the electrical resistance data and use formulas to calculate the degree and character of stress. We are applying the gauges in a number of locations to gather the best overall picture of how the beams move.
We also measured the deflection of the structural wire “cage” using a fancy laser-level and we recorded the data. This will enable us to compare yearly readings during our annual inspection to determine how the cage may be moving.
This is science and technology – working for preservation.
Clara Deck is a Senior Conservator at The Henry Ford.
Additional Readings:
- Dymaxion House
- Curating & Preserving: The Dymaxion House
- Learning about "The House of the Future"
- Dymaxion House at its 1948-1991 Site, near Andover, Kansas
technology, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, conservation, collections care, Henry Ford Museum, by Clara Deck, Dymaxion House, Buckminster Fuller
I have always found John Brown to be an intriguing historical figure. Recently I studied a print in The Henry Ford's collection made by the popular printmakers Currier & Ives in 1870 featuring John Brown. This print has helped me to understand the connection between John Brown's actions and the emotions from over 150 years ago surrounding the Civil War in the United States.
In the years prior to the Civil War, Southern slave-owners stubbornly defended the necessity of slavery while vocal abolitionists continued to oppose it. For many people—especially in the North—slavery was still an abstract concept. But by appealing to emotions, different people during this time made thousands of Americans suddenly have a point of view.
One was John Brown, a long-time anti-slavery activist who took matters into his own hands. On October 16, 1859, he tried to steal government weapons in Harper's Ferry, Va., convinced that Southern slaves would follow him in a revolt. But he was caught and hanged for treason. Northerners honored him because he was willing to die for a cause. But it gave Southerners one more reason to prepare for war.
Currier & Ives of New York City published this hand-colored lithograph in 1870 based on the painting by Louis Ransom made soon after John Brown's death in 1859. This original painting was displayed in P. T. Barnum's American Museum in New York City during the spring and summer of 1863, the same year that Currier & Ives published their first lithograph on this subject. The second version of the lithograph, shown here, was made later but sentiment about Civil War heroes sold well and this scene continued to appeal to American popular taste of the 1870s.
The text printed below this lithograph includes "Meeting a Slave Mother and her Child on the steps of Charlestown Jail on his way to Execution. Regarding them with a look of compassion Captain Brown stooped and kissed the Child then met his fate." This did not actually happen the day John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859. Brown was surrounded by troops and the public had no direct access to him. This story was first published in the New-York Tribune on December 5, 1859. Although it was later revealed as untrue, it became a popular legend about John Brown.
The poet John Greenleaf Whittier included this story in his poem, "Brown of Ossawatomie" printed on December 22, 1859; as did James Redpath in his biography, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, published in January 1860. Redpath wrote about John Brown's walk from jail to the gallows in his book on page 397:
"As he stepped out of the door, a black woman, with a little child in her arms, stood near his way. The twain were of the despised race for whose emancipation and elevation to the dignity of children of God he was about to lay down his life. His thoughts at that moment none can know except as his acts interpret them. He stopped for a moment in his course, stooped over, and with the tenderness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood of man, kissed it affectionately."
John Brown was a hero to many abolitionists during the Civil War and this legend surrounding him helps to explain what he represented to them. The Currier & Ives print version made in 1870 of "John Brown, The Martyr," attests to the continuing importance of this legend in the era following the Civil War.
Cynthia Read Miller, Curator of Photographs and Prints, is continually fascinated with the museum’s over one million historical graphics.
Civil War, by Cynthia Read Miller, archives, art, African American history
No single reason can sufficiently explain why in a brief period between 1910 and 1920, nearly half a million Southern Blacks moved from farms, villages, towns and cities to the North, starting what would ultimately be a 50-year migration of millions. What would be known as the Great Migration was the result of a combination of fundamental social, political and economic structural problems in the South and an exploding Northern economy. Southern Blacks streamed in the thousands and hundreds of thousands throughout the industrial cities of the North to fill the work rolls of factories desperate for cheap labor. Better wages, however, were not the only pull that lured migrants north. Crushing social and political oppression and economic peonage in the South provided major impetus to Blacks throughout the South seeking a better life. Detroit, with its automotive and war industries, was one of the main destinations for thousands of Southern Black migrants.
In 1910 Detroit’s population was 465,766, with a small but steadily growing Black population of 5,741. By 1920 post-war economic growth and a large migration of Southerners to the industrialized North more than doubled the city’s population to 993,678, an overall increase of 113 percent from 1910. Most startling, at least for white Detroiters, was the growth of the city’s Black population to 40,838, with most of that growth occurring between 1915 and 1920.
Photo: P.833.34535 Fordson Tractor Assembly Line at the Ford Rouge Plant, 1923
Before the war, Detroit’s small Black community was barely represented in the city’s industrial workforce. World War I production created the demand for larger numbers of workers and served as an entry point for Black workers into the industrial economy. Growing numbers of Southern migrants made their way to Detroit and specifically to Ford Motor Company to meet increased production for military and consumer demands.
By the end of World War I over 8,000 black workers were employed in the city’s auto industry, with 1,675 working at Ford. Many of Ford’s Black employees worked as janitors and cleaners or in the dirty and dangerous blast furnaces and foundries at the growing River Rouge Plant’s massive blast furnaces and foundries. But some were employed as skilled machinists or factory foremen, or in white-collar positions. Ford paid equal wages for equal work, with Blacks and whites earning the same pay in the same posts. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Ford Motor Company was the largest employer of Black workers in the city, due in part to Henry Ford’s personal relationships with leading Black ministers. Church leaders in the Black community helped secure employment for hundreds and possibly thousands, but more importantly, they also helped to mediate conflicts between white and Black workers.
Photo: P.833.55880 African American workers at Ford Motor Company’s Rouge River Plant Cyanide Foundry, 1931
Photo: P.833.57788 Foundry Workers at Ford Rouge Plant, 1933
Photo: P.833.59567 Pouring Hot Metal into Molds at Ford Rouge Plant Foundry, Dearborn, Michigan, 1934
In addition to jobs, Ford Motor Company provided social welfare services to predominantly Black suburban communities in Inkster and Garden City during the depths of the Great Depression. Ford provided housing and fuel allowances as well as low-interest, short-term loans to its employees living in those communities. Additionally, Ford built community centers, refurbished several schools and ran company commissaries that provided inexpensive retail goods and groceries. (You can learn more about the complicated history of Ford and Inkster in The Search for Home.)
You can learn more by visiting the Benson Ford Research Center and our online catalog.
Peter Kalinski is Racing Collections Archivist at The Henry Ford. This post was last updated in 2020 with additional text by Curator of Transportation Matt Anderson.
20th century, Michigan, labor relations, Ford workers, Ford Motor Company, Detroit, by Peter Kalinski, African American history
As we celebrate Black History Month here at The Henry Ford, we were more than excited to have our own Executive Chef Mike Trombley share a few modified George Washington Carver recipes with The Detroit News today.
Chef Mike consulted Carver's 1917 pamphlet, "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption" as well as our historic recipe bank.
Make sure to read Chef Mike's interview with The Detroit News. We've shared his recipes below, too. If you'd like to learn more about the George Washington Carver artifacts here in the Collections of The Henry Ford, take a look here.
Peanut Bisque
Presented by Executive Chef Michael Trombley
Ingredients (serves 4-6)
Toast nuts in an oven proof pan at 350 degree oven for 5-7 minutes or until golden brown, stir once.
In a heavy gauge non reactive pot, add the butter and onion and cook on low until onions are translucent.
Add the flour and stir, add milk and whisk then add 1 cup of nuts, stock, nutmeg, salt and pepper, simmer for 30 minutes.
Adjust seasoning if needed, puree with hand held blender.
Dish out to bowls and add the remainder of the chopped nuts, parsley and truffle oil.
From Chef Mike: "This dish was somewhat modified for our catering and banquet menu. The truffle oil being the most noticeable, also the addition of stock, nutmeg and butter for a richer flavor. In the original recipe the milk was warmed and peanut butter was added, because of it’s delicate nature I roasted my own nuts and created a roux (butter flour) to stabilize this soup."
Roasted Peanut, Apple and Celery Salad
Presented by Executive Chef Michael Trombley
Ingredients (Serves 6)
Toast nuts in an oven proof pan at 350 degree oven for 5-7 minutes or until golden brown, stir once and let cool.
Prepare and gather all items as described.
In a large bowl mix mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon, salt and pepper.
Add peanuts, apples, celery, grapes and carrots to bowl and mix.
Line 6 plates with butter lettuce and top with the mixed peanut apple salad and enjoy.
From Chef Mike: "This recipe was slightly modified to include grapes, sour cream, lemon juice and carrot. Chopped parsley could also make a great addition!"
Take a look at...
George Washington Carver: Agricultural Scientist, Social Activist
African American history, George Washington Carver, recipes, food
This time of year I feel so nostalgic about activities surrounding Valentine's Day! I fondly recall making cards for my mother on construction paper by coloring with crayons. Many looked a lot like this one in the museum's collections.I also have many happy memories of exchanging cards with my classmates in elementary school, especially cutouts featuring kids or animals.
Take a look at this Cutout Valentine, "The Flags Spell 'Come Back to Me' Because I'm Lonely as You Can See," 1945. A mechanical card with two pieces hinged together so that the boat can rock from side to side. It was a gift to the museum from Mrs. Harvey Firestone, Jr. (Elizabeth Parke Firestone) and came in with the archival collection, Firestone Family Papers.
This year I searched our collections for more selections of valentines and found some surprises. I happened to find several which struck me as a quite unique. One is designed to look like a promissory note, picture above, from a bank in the 1850s. Another is a cutout card featuring kids playing with radio equipment in the 1920s - then the latest technology! The third example is a card that folds out to form an elaborate 3D tissue bell.
Then I came across this photo of a Valentine's Day Party. It is identified as a Girls' Club Valentine Dance, but they look like ladies and a gentleman to me. The room is decorated with crepe paper streamers and a large heart-shaped doorway. The sign above the doorway reads, "Kiss Me!"
My searches also came up with a man named Eugene Valentine. Once I saw this I realized that Valentine is indeed a last name, not just a romantic holiday. The name is from the Latin "Valentinus" based on "valere," meaning to be strong. In the British Isles, it has been recorded from medieval times as a first and then a last name with many different spellings, including Valentyn, Vallentine, and Valentine.
I also found a business named Valentine-Souvenir Company of New York City. There are several dozen postcards made by this company in our collections, but not one is a Valentine card. It turns out this company was formed from several later mergers of the founding company started by John Valentine of Dundee, Scotland, in 1825. The original Valentine Company made lithograph prints before starting to produce postcards in 1896. From 1914 to 1923 the Valentine-Souvenir Company of New York City printed postcards using the letterpress halftone color printing process.
I think that any search for Valentine's Day cards needs to include heart shapes as a design motif. In addition to the cards, I expected to find jewelry, dishes and quilts to have heart motifs, but here's something unexpected: a forerunner of the bicycle made with heart shapes cut out of the wooden wheels.
What would Valentine's Day be without a box of chocolates? This 1950s magazine advertisement says it all. Happy Valentine's Day!
Cynthia Read Miller, Curator of Photographs and Prints, is continually fascinated with the museum’s over one million historical graphics.
by Cynthia Read Miller, holidays, archives, correspondence, home life, Valentine's Day
In the past few years, the Conservation Department has worked on a number of historically important flags from Michigan, including several Civil War battle flags.
This flag dates from the end of the 19th century and was used by a G.A.R. post in Lyons, Michigan. The G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) was a Union veterans’ organization formed after the Civil War and there were posts in almost every town in Michigan. This flag would have been used in parades on patriotic occasions in Lyons. In 1917 the flag was donated to the town “to raise at funerals of G.A.R. or veterans of any war.” It was displayed for many years in the Lyons-Muir Historical Museum. Its caretakers recognized the need to preserve it and brought it to Textile Conservator Fran Faile.
Over the course of several months, the flag was humidified and flattened to reduce distortions in the weave. It was stabilized and protected by encasing it between layers of sheer nylon tulle. Hand stitching secures all the small fragments of fabric from moving or being lost. The Historical Society is presently having a protective case built that will enable the flag to rest flat rather than be stressed by continued hanging.
Years of use and display had made the silk fabric very fragile.
The painted lettering was especially brittle.
All the fragments were flattened and arranged between the layers of tulle.
The paint was humidified and flattened.
Ready to be installed in its new case!
Fran Faile is former Textile Conservator at The Henry Ford.
21st century, 19th century, veterans, Michigan, Grand Army of the Republic, conservation, collections care, Civil War, by Fran Faile
Design lovers have been celebrating the 100th birthday of Ray Eames, one half of the renowned Eames design duo, the past few days, bringing her role into the spotlight once again.
Ray and Charles rose to prominence in an era and an industry where men stood out with their achievements, often ignoring the accomplishments of their female counterparts. However, Charles always found a way to include Ray and highlight her work. At the end of the day, Ray was crucial to all components of Eames.
Ray was trained as a painter and sculptor. She loved pattern and design - her office at 901 Washington Boulevard was filled with drawers of colorful papers as inspiration for the next project. Every design element was purposeful for Ray. Whether it be a fabric selection for a chair or the flower arrangements she placed on her own dining room table at home, every choice had been scrutinized. Ray didn't do things just to do them - she did it as part of a grander vision.
Attention to detail was just one of Ray's well-known traits and was a critical element within their work. You see that with every piece of furniture they created. When you evaluate their portfolio over time, each model was better than the previous as the two tried to find just the right combination of materials in the finished products to make it, finally, perfect by their standards.
As such a detail-oriented person, Ray's work was her life and her life was her work. Both she and Charles weren't the types of people to use "free time" to watch television or "hang out." Free time was time to start the next project or research new inspiration.
It's impossible to fully disentangle Charles' and Ray's contributions to the overall Eames design achievement. Theirs was a creative partnership so completely entwined that teasing it apart only muddies their legacy.
The following post was originally posted on Herman Miller's Discover blog on Dec. 13, 2012. We're pleased to share this story here on The Henry Ford's blog. Many thanks to our friends at Herman Miller for their permission to post this for our readers to enjoy. - Lish Dorset
By Mindy Koschmann
In a 1980 interview with Ruth Bowman for the Archives of American Art, Ray responded to a question about her chosen vocation:
“I never thought of myself as an artist and couldn’t bear the word.”
She objected to the generality of the label, but her comments about her interdisciplinary approach to art and design provide an intriguing contrast:
"It was natural for me not to separate them, you know—now you study history, now you study dance, now you study music, or now you study pottery or whatever it is— it all seemed to be one thing."
Of Ray’s many artistic pursuits—painting, film, textiles, fashion, and furniture design—perhaps the most personal was her proclivity for making interesting arrangements with found objects. Of her curious habit, she said:
“Almost everything that was ever collected was an example of some facet of design and form. We never collected anything as just collectors, but because something was inherent in the piece that made it seem like a good idea to be looking at it. “
It’s always a good idea to revisit the work of Charles and Ray Eames, especially in light of the 100th anniversary of Ray’s birth on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. We celebrate Ray’s life and work as a painter, collector, and designer.
Posting with us today is Cheryl Oz of Cheryl Oz Designs, a metro Detroit illustrator and designer. Cheryl is a past Maker Faire Detroit participant and recipient of an Editor's Choice Award. - Lish Dorset
I studied design and advertising at the College for Creative Studies. During an art history class, I was introduced to the work of Charles and Ray Eames and from that point on I never looked at art and design the same way again.
At the time I knew very little about the designers, so what I loved the most was what I saw in their work. I loved the clean lines, color choices and movement in their pieces. Their furniture was so different from the furniture I grew up with in my family's home.
From that point on I feel like my work has been influenced by the Eames aesthetics. It wasn't until years later when I decided to start focusing more on illustration, that I then remembered how inspired I was by the Eames duo and imagined others most likely were, too.
I have always been inspired by everyday things. I loved the notion that when the first Eames chair was in the production process, it was meant to be a mass-produced, affordable chair that anyone could own. I like to think of my artwork in the same manner. I feel that everyone should be able to afford art that they love for their home. Surely, I thought there were other people that felt the same way that I do, and still wanted a bit of Eames in their home, so I started painting a few of my favorite pieces of their furniture.
Besides being a painter, Ray was the woman behind the scenes who gave insightful input to her husband Charles, who appreciated her talents and held her opinions in high regard. Her input was almost unheard of for a woman of her time. She had an incredible sense of color and with Charles, they both led a colorful life in their amazing world of art and design.
Happy 100th birthday, Ray!
20th century, 21st century, 2010s, women's history, furnishings, Eames, design, by Cheryl Oz
