Thanks to Thomas Jefferson’s fastidious record keeping, we know a great deal about the objects inside the house at Monticello during his lifetime, how they were used, and in some instances, even the exact spot they were placed. Since the creation of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923, curators have worked to return original objects to the house to better interpret the history of Monticello. Some items were easily located, others were difficult to track down, and the location of some remains a mystery to this day.
In this slivestream Monticello’s Associate Curator Emilie Johnson and Associate Curator of Decorative Arts Diane Ehrenpreis. discuss how our Curatorial team locates Jefferson-era objects centuries later, and some of their still “unsolved mysteries.”