Manufacturing & Trade

Kohler advertisement from the April 15, 1916 edition of 'The Saturday Evening Post.'

Home Furnishings / Industry / Sheboygan / Related Stories / Everyday Life / 1877-1900 / Manufacturing & Trade / Sheboygan County / Science & Medicine / Region 5 - Center East / The 1904 Kohler “Armeda” Toilet

The Early History of the Kohler Company

As was so often the case with major American businesses in the 1800s, the Kohler Company grew from modest roots. The company’s founder, John Michael Kohler, began his working life first as a delivery truck driver and then a salesman. Born in…

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November 10, 2020

Health & Medicine / Home Furnishings / Industry / Related Stories / Everyday Life / 1877-1900 / Manufacturing & Trade / Science & Medicine / The 1904 Kohler “Armeda” Toilet

The Bathroom as a Household Space

When we think of a “bathroom,” we usually imagine a room containing three standard fixtures—a bathtub, a sink, and a toilet. Bathrooms such as these are so universal in homes today that we can hardly imagine a time when they did not…

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November 10, 2020

Science & Technology / Clothing, Apparel & Fashion / Related Stories / Curators' Favorites / Manufacturing & Trade / 1918-1945 / 1945-1965 / Science & Medicine / X-Ray Shoe Fitting Machine

The Rise and Fall of Shoe Fitting Fluoroscopes

Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were invented almost simultaneously in the United States and England. Milwaukee quickly became a center of the new technology.

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October 10, 2020

Home Furnishings / Art, Sport & Entertainment / Edgerton / Art & Design / Dane County / Object Histories / Wisconsin Made / Everyday Life / 1877-1900 / Manufacturing & Trade / Region 7 - South Center / Pauline Pottery Covered Jar

OBJECT HISTORY: Pauline Pottery Covered Jar

Between 1888 and 1909 the city of Edgerton, Wisconsin was home to six different companies producing nationally recognized ceramic art. The art potteries of Edgerton were part of a late nineteenth and early twentieth century trend known as the American Art Pottery movement. This covered jar, made at Pauline Pottery, represents one example of this broad movement in American ceramics.

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September 10, 2020

Art & Design / Art, Sport & Entertainment / Home Furnishings / Industry / Related Stories / Ethnicity & Identity / Curators' Favorites / Everyday Life / 1877-1900 / Manufacturing & Trade / Pauline Pottery Covered Jar

Women in the American Art Pottery Movement

Women played a central role in the American Art Pottery movement, both as leaders like Pauline Jacobus and as workers like Lulu Deveraux Dixon.

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September 10, 2020

Home Furnishings / Art, Sport & Entertainment / Art & Design / Edgerton / Dane County / Industry / Related Stories / Everyday Life / Curators' Favorites / 1877-1900 / Manufacturing & Trade / Region 7 - South Center / Pauline Pottery Covered Jar

The Pauline Pottery

Chicago-born artist and entrepreneur Pauline Jacobus was the central figure of Edgerton, Wisconsin's art pottery movement. In 1888, Jacobus and her husband Oscar relocated the Pauline Pottery from Chicago to Edgerton to take advantage of the area's quality clay.

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September 10, 2020