Episode. 998. Delftware, and The “MET” Wives That Helped Develop Museums. Part1.

All the big names of tour artifact hunters whom helped start the world’s first public museum, with many of them starting museums in their homes.

Dutch Delftware, its vases, plates, bowels and figures, have been touched by women for over 3 centuries, from shop daughters to potters widows to queens and American heiresses. The women who made, collected, and preserved them were all responding to unique opportunities, challenges and pivotal change. Their lives are intertwined with these objects, this blue and white holds their stories.

The contributions of women continued, creating parks, The Van Cortlandt House Museum, windmill China, Old Dutch Cleanser, Dutch Boy paints, and Dutch-Colonial architecture just to name a few.

Alice Claypoole Gwynn and other prominent NYC women set forth the Cooper Hewitt and Metropolitan Museums in motion.

An introduction to tours of this type, taking a contemporary of highlights in France and Italy.

Women create the National Society of The Colonial Dames Of America saving structures like the Mount Vernon Estate and other historic dwellings. These were some of the first house museums the public could walk through.

Alice Morse Earle and Elizabeth Duane Gillespie were major contributors to women in the arts an sciences.

Chinaware collecting wasn’t just about the object; it was about cultural exchange, adventure and discovery. Women acted as scholars , merchants, collectors and storytellers, driven by passion and curiosity.

A description of 5 years of furniture-making training at one of the most infamous trade schools in the world, a few favorite professors and some opportunities that followed.

Mary becomes Queen of England and creates blue and white delftware rooms that were hidden from sight into her eutopia.