Tools and Equipment
Access the catalog records for any item by clicking on the images below or the markers of the map.
Plate Warmer
Artist/Creator: Duparquet & Huot
Holding Institution: Albany County Historical Association (Ten Broeck Mansion), Albany
The c.1885 Duparquet & Huot plate warmer, still in its original location in the Ten Broeck Mansion's butler's pantry, illuminates the ACHA’s mission to present the stories of the rich and diverse history and culture of Albany County. The Plate Warmer is the focal point of the Ten Broeck Mansion’s butler’s pantry, the key exhibit space used to interpret the lives of servants, including those originally born into slavery. The piece illuminates the lives of African American, Irish, and German servants in 19th c. Albany. The plate warmer visually draws the attention of visitors with its prominent location and allows interpretive staff to share advice from African American authors such as Robert Roberts, whose House Servant’s Directory (1827) formed a basis for household management in the North. The piece also speaks to the importance of ways to ensure the best possible presentation of servants’ work to the Olcott family. The Olcott’s household staff served under the supervision of Roseanna Vosburgh, who was born into slavery in Columbia County NY, baptized into the African Baptist Church at age 21, and then became the Olcott family’s paid household manager for 63 years, supervising a staff of Irish, English, and German servants. Vosburgh was also a founder of a precursor to the Underground Railroad and set up a philanthropic trust for African American widows upon her death. An abolitionist, philanthropist, and manager, Roseanna Vosburgh is at the heart of our interpretation of this fascinating and complex space in the Ten Broeck Mansion, admired by visitors. The stories within this space help illuminate the lives of those who built Albany, New York.
The c.1885 plate warmer references late 18th-early 19th c. plate warmers, which included japanning, both a decorative finish and a way to preserve sheet metal from corrosion. The applied cast metal decorations likely reference an 18th-early 19th c. tradition of hand-painted gold ornamentation. The piece represents a merging of post-Civil War mechanized improvements in the home with this earlier decorative tradition of Regency-era fireplace plate warmers. As a top-of-the-line piece from the New York City-based firm Duparquet & Huot, it reflects the industry and innovation of New York State, the wealth of the Olcotts (prominent Albany bankers), and the importance of presenting the culinary efforts of skilled servants in the best possible way, ensuring all those dining had warm food in unevenly heated houses.
A prominent NY firm, Duparquet & Huot supplied custom equipment to the Goulds and Vanderbilts. This piece speaks to the understated wealth of the Olcotts - a rare surviving glimpse of the high-quality goods used in their home. Used daily by the African American, Irish, and German servants at the Ten Broeck Mansion, it was a far easier and more sanitary way to warm plates. In earlier fireplace-heated versions, servants sometimes had to carry entire plate warmers up and down stairs since they blocked the warmth of the dining room fireplace otherwise. The piece is exhibited with an image of Roseanna Vosburgh, an abolitionist, and the Olcott's African American household manager for 63 years.
Wood-splint basket with lid
Artist/Creator: Mohegan/Munsee
Holding Institution: Historic Huguenot Street, New Paltz
The splint basket helps highlight the story of Native American habitation and craftsmanship in the Hudson Valley. Formed by weaving thin strips of flexible ash wood made by pounding apart the growth rings of soaked tree trunks, the basket is typical of those made by Native people of the Northeast in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Similar examples appear in the collections of the New York State Museum, Historic New England, and Harvard’s Peabody Museum.
The area of New Paltz has been the home to the Esopus Munsee people for thousands of years. The Munsee, a sub-tribe of the Lenape (aka Delaware), shared a similar lifestyle and language with the Mohicans who lived to the north and east, including parts of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont. The Munsee and Mohicans regularly interacted, sharing trading and kinship ties. In the second half of the 17th century, Dutch and French-speaking settlers began taking over land in the Hudson Valley. Over the next 150 years, the region’s Indigenous population struggled as communities were forced from their ancestral homes, sometimes banding with allied tribes, like the Mohicans in Stockbridge, MA. Yet, well into the early 19th century, accounts were made in New Paltz of Native people still living in the area, often along the banks of the Wallkill River. According to these reports, one way the Esopus Munsee supported themselves was by gathering timber to make scoops and baskets that they sold for food and other necessities.
Contrary to popular 19th-century narratives like James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Indigenous people did not simply disappear from the Hudson Valley and surrounding regions. In the 18th century, Native people like the Munsee and Mohicans adapted to increasing challenges to their lives and travel patterns, and many found ways to remain in, or return seasonally to, their ancestral homelands. Traditional skills were extended into what had become the mainstream economy through the making and selling of baskets and carved spoons and bowls. Already skilled in using forest products, local Native people adapted to an emerging market for inexpensive, lightweight, and decorative containers, such as the HHS basket. Multiple references are made in Ralph LeFevre’s “A History of New Paltz, New York,” (1909) to this fact, including on page 79, “There was a family of Indians that would come and live in a hut in the woods of Cornelius DuBois …, and with his permission cut down any timber they desired, which they would manufacture into scoops and baskets. Stephen G. DuBois tells us that when he was a small child he visited this Indian family many times.”
Baskets similar to this one currently add to period furnishings in the Jean Hasbrouck House, where they are interpreted, along with carved wooden bowls and scoops, to explain the ongoing presence of the Esopus Munsee in New Paltz in the 18th and early 19th century. A planned 2023 exhibition of baskets and other Native-made objects will reach a broader audience and do even more to dispel misconceptions about Native American extinction. The exhibition will also illustrate the multicultural atmosphere that was 18th and 19th century New Paltz, as well as hardships the Esopus Munsee faced after Europeans took over their lands and confined them to a small portion of the place the Indigenous people once farmed and hunted freely.