Finding Aids

B. Schwanda & Sons was a manufacturer and wholesaler of pearl buttons with factories in Long Island City, New York, Staffordville, Connecticut, and Denton, Maryland, and offices and showrooms in Manhattan. The small fragment of surviving records contains information on dyeing and bleaching the mother-of-pearl for buttons, purchasing and sales to discount stores, inter-office memos, inventories, sample cards of buttons, and limited information about the factories and piece-work rates.

Bartley Crucible & Refractories, Inc. manufactured graphite crucibles in a plant at 67 Oxford Street in Trenton, New Jersey, a major center for the pottery industry. The company was originally named the Jonathan Bartley Crucible Company and was incorporated on February 24, 1908. This collection consists of the business records of the firm throughout its various name changes and the personal papers of two owners: Lewis H. Lawton (1876-1953), a former master bricklayer, and Walter L. Shearer (1900-1984), a ceramic engineer who had been a consultant to Bartley since 1930. None of the records are complete. The business records and the Shearer papers and ephemera represent selections of much larger bodies of material, while the Lawton papers are an accidentally preserved sample from the plant. Substantive correspondence has been sifted from a large mass of orders, bills, and receipts. A sample of more routine correspondence has been saved to give an accurate picture of each firm's trading relationships. The Shearer materials have been sampled to present a picture of his education, personality, and social life.

Charles H. DeMirjian (1925-) was a packaging design manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. He collected pictures, advertisements, and publications showing DuPont consumer products, as well as some of the products and packages themselves. The collection consists of brochures, advertisements, photographs, and ephemera showing DuPont Company consumer products from 1913 to 1984.

The Color Association of the United States (CAUS) was organized on February 19, 1915 as the Textile Color Card Association (TCCA) for the purpose of standardizing colors for the textile trade. Their records include minutes; reports; staff and membership files; publications; advertisements; cloth samples; seasonal bulletins; and color cards. Color standardization services for the government and various industries are documented as well.

Domenico Mortellito (1906-1994) was a designer, muralist, and sculptor noted for working in plastics and other synthetic materials. The majority of the materials in this small collection deal with the design and execution of the DuPont Pavilion at the second New York World's Fair in 1964-1965, including correspondence, studies, drawings, and photos of the take-apart model of the original design.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was a chemical company and began a research program in dyes in 1916. By the late 1920s the DuPont Company was one of the four major U.S. dye producers and controlled twenty-five percent of the market. The records consist of notebooks and procedures on dyes, which describe the colors, uses, applications, tests, and fastness and dying properties for dyes manufactured by DuPont and its competitors.

Henry Hemmendinger was one of the preeminent color scientists of his day. Hemmendinger's papers represent the span of his career and includes contributions from a variety of individuals and organizations working the field of color science.

The Inter-Society Color Council coordinates the activities of leading technical societies relating to the description, specification, and standardization of color, and promotes the practical application of this knowledge in science, art, and industry. Dorothy Nickerson (1900-1985) worked in the research laboratory of the Munsell Color Company from 1921-1926, and is known for her numerous contributions to the field of color science. This collection consists of materials from the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum.

The Inter-Society Color Council Records represents a wide array of individuals and organizations and their contributions to the development of standardized systems for identifying and evaluating color. This collection documents the advancement of color technology in the twentieth century and its practical application to problems related to color in science, art, and industry.

Jacquelin Lee McConaughey (1920-2001) was an artist and longtime employee of the DuPont Company. This collection consists of three photographic prints of her paintings that she created for the DuPont Company's Environmental Color System.