Introduction

David Thorson:
Hello, my name is David Thorson. I'm a digital guide at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. You're listening to a special podcast series called Sharing History: 100 Years of Telling American Stories at Monticello.

Since the creation of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923, curators have searched high and low to find all the stuff that once filled Jefferson’s home. They’ve been very successful, building a collection of more than 5,000 objects. Monticello’s curators recently sat down to discuss the collection and how it has evolved over the past 100 years.

Susan Stein:
I'm Susan Stein. I am Richard Gilder Senior Curator for Special Projects. I spent more than 30 years at Monticello heading the museum program.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
This is Diane Ehrenpreis. I am Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at Monticello.

Emilie Johnson:
My name is Emilie Johnson. I am the Curator of Arts and History at Monticello.

Susan Stein:
When we think about how Monticello is presented, I look back to those early years in the 1920s, just after Monticello was acquired by the fledgling Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. Monticello's interior was never empty, because the purchase included some 20 objects that came with the house. They included things like the brackets in the entrance hall, the pendant light in the hall, the mirrors in the parlor. But the overriding idea in those years, or what animated the foundation at its outset, was the opportunity to reveal Jefferson's home as a shrine to his ideals. The emphasis was definitely on political history.

To understand Jefferson as the person who drafted the Declaration, I would draw people to the original rough draft, scored and scratched like a schoolboy's exercise, that Jefferson shared with visitors, as well as the three other versions that were here. Because I think that what drove Jefferson was his commitment to those ideals, even though he was flawed and the ideals were not realized.

I would also want people to imagine what he looked like, and so I would be drawn to portraits. These could be the wonderful Houdon busts that he sat for in Paris in 1789, it could be the Mather Brown from 1786, and it might be the wonderful Gilbert Stuart portrait that is also one of the great icons.

But what are you thinking conveys Jefferson's significance? If you had two things to save, what would they be?

Emilie Johnson:
To me, I think it's the writing suite. I think it's the desk and the polygraph.

The Private Suite

David Thorson:
That desk was located in a private suite of rooms that included Jefferson’s bedroom; his office, which he called a “cabinet;” and his library. That’s where you find his famed polygraph, a machine he used to make copies of his letters. Diane describes the space in more detail.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
The writing suite is anchored by Jefferson's revolving armchair. It really almost embodies Jefferson as a person. It's red leather, so it's padded, it's comfortable. And most importantly, the seat can rotate, which is somewhat unusual. That seat sits atop four mahogany legs that are on casters, so you could also move your chair around in space in a way that we take for granted today. So he did not invent a revolving chair, but he certainly valued it because it was comfortable, also a time saving device.

Jefferson's starting to have physical discomfort in his legs, and so he orders a bench from Philadelphia, which can be pushed directly up next to the revolving chair, so it makes an Americanized version of a French form called a duchesse or a chaise.

The other piece of furniture that makes this triumvirate of iconic objects is a reworked writing table. The top on this table has been fitted with an additional piece and this too rotates. It's so carefully thought through that there's a cut on two sides, so it's no longer a perfect circle, so that when he pulls it up, it's exactly flat, so he doesn't have this bump in the way.

For me, how Jefferson recorded and then stored his correspondence also speaks to his Enlightenment worldview. He used these cartons that could slip into the filing press, they were portable, so he could pull them out, and we have a visitor description asking for some documents, Jefferson saying, “If I have them, I'll be able to retrieve them in just a matter of moments.” To the amazement of the visitor, he's able to pull out this documentation that was requested.

This is part of his trying to perfect his workspace for efficiency, ease of movement, not having to get up to retrieve things. You can just rotate a tabletop or push your chair over to the filing press, which speaks to his interest in time management and systems that can make his life more efficient and be able to access knowledge whenever he wants it.

Susan Stein:
I agree with you that the private suite is where you can imagine Jefferson's world most particularly. It is very much the place of communications. He has a network of correspondents all across the world. He's always eager to place Monticello within the context of that larger world. In the entrance hall, he has great big maps that help people just picture where Monticello is in central Virginia. In his private suite, he's got those two wonderful globes made by Bardin from 1805, both the terrestrial world but also the celestial world. They're the world, as it was known. The private suite was also a place of discovery, where he kept scientific instruments and telescopes, because he was also an active astronomer.

But it isn't only the heady, intellectual world. His study was the place where he directed the activities of the plantation.

David Thorson:
This is where we see the paradox that is Jefferson. On the one hand, you picture this great thinker at the desk. But that’s also where he managed the hundreds of men, women, and children he held in slavery at Monticello, the people who built his home and kept it functioning.

Moving on from the private suite, Susan and Emilie talked about how Classical art, architecture, and ideals were critical to Jefferson. You can see that in the very design of Monticello.

The Classical Past

Susan Stein:
The house itself as an artifact reveals so much about Jefferson's intellectual vantage point. It's a neoclassical language built on classical vocabulary, inside and out of the house itself, with its porticoes and with the Corinthian, Ionic, Doric, and Tuscan orders, but there are also objects that convey Jefferson's interest in the classical world.

Emilie Johnson:
We all favor our babies, but Ariadne is, I think, really, one of the powerful objects in the collection. Ariadne is a sculpture in the entrance hall, right in front of the fireplace. She is a figure in Greek mythology. She's celebrated. She's very beautiful, that always helps. But she represents stories of the transfer of knowledge. Jefferson wants things like this to be physically placed and talked about.

She is sent to Jefferson from someone who shares his belief in Greek and Roman principles and how those are going to be placed in the presence of the emerging American story. In the Monticello mythology, Ariadne represents the sharing of knowledge between Jefferson and his elite cohort of educated people who are sharing ideas.

Susan Stein:
Even the silver that he designed—the cups, the goblets, the urn—are expressions, for him, of the classical world.

Monticello is an American story, but it is so much built on European history. It's his way of metabolizing the past to express American identity. American identity isn't like a native plant that is homegrown. It's something that is really built on his knowledge of the past. And he understands that art and architecture are ways of creating and fostering an American identity, and that's what he does at Monticello.

Conveying “Americanness”

David Thorson:
Jefferson connected the burgeoning American identity with the European past, but he also displayed objects that celebrated America’s present. The entrance hall, for example, served as a kind of museum, exhibiting Native American artifacts and natural history specimens. He also displayed busts of many the nation’s founders.

Susan Stein:
How do you convey Americanness? How do you convey this new nation? It's conveyed in the hall. You're seeing Hamilton and Jefferson in the hall, and you are also seeing natural history specimens and two maps of Virginia. All these things convey Americanness.

Conveying the revolution is more difficult. You have, of course, Trumbull's engraving the Declaration of Independence, the depiction of Congress approving the Declaration, with Jefferson standing with the other four members of the committee.

Diane Ehrenpreis: I vote for the worthies. In the Tea Room, there's some plaster brackets, and there's four busts—busts of George Washington, Lafayette, Ben Franklin, and John Paul Jones, the naval hero. And Jefferson refers to them as one of his "galleries of worthies."

Emilie Johnson:
There's this strong tradition of showing off ancestors, but Jefferson is showing not his own ancestors, Jefferson is showing the pantheon of worthies in the Parlor and the Tea Room as well. He's showing the people who shaped this place and this idea. And I think that idea of Americanness, is really, really important and that's what's going on.

Susan Stein: He begins this in Paris. What's inspired him is the portraits that he's seen of not only the Roman emperors but also of modern figures. And he realizes that America needs the equivalency, because he wants the larger world to respect the new nation.

Women at Monticello

David Thorson:
Dozens of people lived on the mountaintop with Jefferson, including many women. His wife, Martha Jefferson, died in 1782 long before the house was finished. In his retirement years, his daughter Martha Randolph and her 11 children were often here, including six granddaughters. Diane and Susan highlighted a few objects related to these family members.

Susan Stein:
The family spaces were restored in 2015, and the spaces devoted to Jefferson's sister Anna Jefferson Marks, who lived upstairs, to Martha Jefferson Randolph, who also had a bedchamber upstairs, to the nursery, to the attic space occupied by the granddaughters, all tell a much more complicated story.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
My all-time favorite is Mrs. Jefferson's bureau. This curator with foresight went to an auction of a descendant in Georgia in the 1950s and took a gamble on acquiring this chest of drawers. It had been altered dramatically, so it didn't really look like an 18th century piece of furniture, but we were able to do some research on it and we came to the conclusion that we actually had what descendants called "Mrs. Jefferson's bureau,” which is a chest of drawers. It has four graduated drawers and fluted columns on it.

Mrs. Jefferson dies after 10 years of marriage. He never remarries. Supposedly they had a very happy relationship. Jefferson had two daughters who survived to adulthood, this is exactly the kind of thing that you might have given your daughter as part of her marriage portion, and yet he keeps it for himself in his bedchamber, and we really think that this is a touchpoint for him.

What I've just shared is Jefferson's understanding of Mrs. Jefferson's bureau, but how did Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson think about it and use it? It's a wonderful piece of furniture. It has a slide, which is a thin shelf that you can pull out, and it has felt on the top, which is designed for writing, and of course storage. It could be locked, so this would be where any jewelry she had or personal belongings. It was an expensive piece of furniture. It does date to around the time that they got married, around 1770, 1772. Every time I see it, I'm thrilled to have it restored and back where the public sees it every time you go through Jefferson's bedchamber.

Susan Stein:
I'm glad that you told that story because it's poignant. I think we're talking about what objects mean and what they meant to Jefferson.

Another object that he wrote about is there was a sad event near the end of his life, where his favorite granddaughter, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, had married and moved to Boston. And a shipment of her belongings, including a special writing desk, made for her by John Hemmings, was lost at sea. As a consolation, Jefferson sent to her the desk on which he had drafted the Declaration of Independence. He indulged himself by saying that it was an object, which would "gain strength with time." And the desk is now at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian in Washington. So, I think that it's true that that particular object has gained strength over time. But, in fact, Monticello itself and the objects that it contains have all gained strength over time, because it gives us an opportunity to delve into these various areas so much more deeply.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
He completely gets how important objects are to understanding history. We're sort of in line with Jefferson, understanding that we can tell stories through objects. We all have some special object from our families that maybe we tuck away or keep on your desk. I think our visitors can relate to a chair or Mrs. Jefferson's bureau, in a way that maybe the political history might be a little harder, sometimes, to relate to.

John Hemmings

David Thorson:
Susan mentioned John Hemmings and the desk he made for Jefferson's granddaughter that was lost at sea. Hemmings was a talented, enslaved joiner at Monticello.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
We know Hemmings made Campeche chairs, we know he made bedsteads that were mentioned in family letters, so we have a great list of things that he made that came out of that shop that maybe don't survive.

There's a chair on view in the parlor right now that is an interpretation of a high-style French armchair. A group of these French chairs came around 1816. It's a French form that's a little bit low, so it's the kind of chair you might pull up closer to the fire on a cold night. This chair almost certainly came out of the joiner shop in Hemmings' era as an interpretation of these French chairs. So we're attributing it to Hemmings It showcases his talent.

Clothing

David Thorson:
Textiles are delicate and don’t often survive, so it’s incredible that we have pieces of Jefferson’s clothing.  These include a red silk waistcoat, which Jefferson would have originally worn as a vest.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
I was dazzled when I got to see the waistcoat. It started life as a true waistcoat, which is a sleeveless garment. It's red crepe, beautiful, inviting red shade, and it had buttons all the way down the front and the torso was a little bit longer, reflecting the style of 1780s.

To my amazement, when colleagues pulled it out of storage and we really took a good look at it, someone had folded up the hem, and so it's about five inches shorter, reflecting a style, maybe late 18th century, of a vest that's cropped. And it also had sleeves that were added, so it's become a waistcoat jacket. Those sleeves are red wool and inside there's padding that probably was an addition, maybe some wool fleece or cotton batting.

Susan Stein:
I think it's probably to make it warmer and also it could be a patch.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
Susan, you pointed out this amazing little feature about the inside.

Susan Stein:
Part of the inside of it is hand-knitted. As a knitter, I would say that it has a remarkably fine gauge, and it must have been knitted on very small needles. I always thought that someone had reused Jefferson's socks in there, but if it isn't a sock, it's something like a sock that was sewn in. It's endearing. In fact, Maira Kalman illustrated it in her book, In the Pursuit of Happiness.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
And they're also embroidered T.I., standing in for J, and 9 . 7, which we think is 1797. It was typical that you would embroider who the owner was and the year. The cravats are consecutively numbered. In our collection, we might, for example, have cravats number 5, 7, 9, and 12, to make sure that you rotate, you're not always using one and two in your laundry, and that nothing's missing. You haven't lost important textiles.

Emilie Johnson:
The cravats and the socks and the neck stocks—when they are labeled and numbered, they get preserved, so the family has kept a lot of those objects almost like souvenirs. But it also shows us that whoever is caring for those objects in the time has some level of literacy, because whoever is managing and keeping those things is recognizing the letters and the numbers, matching them. These objects are ways to look at how things were cared for, and how things were managed, and how things were preserved.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
To your point about how objects might indicate the experience of and the labors of the enslaved here at Monticello, Jefferson's clothing, we've noticed how they've been reworked, these pieces. And marrying that with written histories or oral histories that have been recorded about how Sally Hemings was responsible for taking care of his there's so many exciting ways to start looking at our collection from multiple angles.

Changing Curatorial Approach

David Thorson:
The first curators were focused on discovering original Jefferson objects. And that’s still the priority, but over the years, curators have taken different approaches.

Susan Stein:
The course of our curatorial destiny was really charted by Marie Kimball, who came to Monticello as an accomplished Jefferson scholar and turned her attention to objects. And her knowledge was derived, as ours is, her study of primary documents and she also established friendships with descendants of Jefferson.

I think curators, over time, have recognized that not all of Jefferson's belongings or furnishings are out there. They either don't exist, or they may not be available to us. So we have tried to tell a richer, fuller, more comprehensive story by drawing on reproductions of particular things.

Diane, I know that you have focused some of your research attention to the 1950s, where curators then, surprisingly, weren't so dependent on the careful study of objects that you are known for, but instead acquired a lot of generic things to create more fully furnished domestic spaces.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
Evidently, we contracted with an interior designer in the 1950s named Katrina Kipper, and she provided antique furniture, textiles. But a lot of this was Massachusetts furniture. This was not really what was here. There was an era where some of that stuff was removed, it was recognized as not based on research available to our next generation of more professionalized curators, and we really launched into, under James Baer and Susan Stein, a heavy campaign of collecting.

Susan Stein:
When I arrived in 1986, I got back in touch with the descendants of the descendants that Marie Kimball had contacted. The first acquisition that I made was one of the French chairs, allegedly the last one that Jefferson sat in. And Marie Kimball had identified that in 1927, 60 years later, we acquired it. We're interested in posterity. We're playing the long game.

So we know that we need to keep looking and keep our fingers crossed that things keep coming our way. When we can't find them, then we can make the wonderful interpretations that Diane has been so instrumental in creating.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
We’ve been recreating some lost Jefferson objects using his actual measured drawings, notations telling us what material, things like his night table, you'll see in the bedchamber. We'd love to find the original, it might still be out there, but we have the ability to work with our own talented cabinetmaker and recreate an object.

Also, as we've been talking about, objects tell us so much, and in scrutinizing that commission drawing, Jefferson stipulates, he wants a shelf on this table towards the bottom, he wants it reinforced because it's to hold books. I'm like, why does he need books if it's a night table? Comparing other evidence, we recognize he reads in bed. It's an amazing little nugget, but it's incredibly human.

Interpreting Slavery

David Thorson:
Over the past 100 years, a big shift in how we interpret Monticello has led to a shift our collecting as well.

Susan Stein:
The way that we look at things today, I think, is quite a bit different from 1920s. I think that their perspective was one of veneration and reverence, they actually use the word relics. and we don't really use the word relic today. We refer to artworks and furnishings as objects.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
I'm kind of pumped about relics, myself. Thank goodness for the relic keepers. The people we're talking about here are mostly female descendants of Jefferson who took time to tape sticky labels to backs of furniture making sure that forever-after people would remember that this object was associated with Jefferson and Monticello. But what that has led to is an imbalance that more high style things survive as opposed to sort of day-to-day things.

Susan Stein:
Relic, to me, is not a derogatory term. It's more of a perspective that you have. We are grateful to people, as Diane said, who preserved objects. They really understood that Monticello needed to be populated by authentic objects, but it is, of course, skewed to Jefferson, and not skewed to the women who lived at Monticello, or children, and especially toward the enslaved.

Emilie Johnson:
For me, after having been to Monticello, I want someone to understand that there was this person named Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson had a vision for a nation, based on these ideals of self-governance. There's this place where he lived, where he was surrounded by his daughters and grandchildren and visitors and enslaved people, and that their complicated realities shaped these ideals of self-determination and equal rights.

Susan Stein:
I agree with you that the way that we look at things today, our perspective definitely leans into understanding Jefferson and also the larger world and context that he was so much a part of. So our lens has expanded. I'm thinking especially about the family diary that helped us interpret the cabin occupied by John and Priscilla Hemmings.

Emilie Johnson:
When your lens is shifting and opening and expanding to all the people who lived here at Monticello, you can find things you didn't even know were there, which is what happened to us.

A few years ago, Susan and I were fortunate to go out and see a descendant who Susan had known for years and Diane had known for years. She gave us this incredibly rich description of John and Priscilla Hemings's house.

John Hemings was born in about 1776. He was an enslaved carpenter. His wife Priscilla Hemings' job was to care for young children. This was a description of the interior of their house on Mulberry Row.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
You guys came back with the little work box, folded letters. I took the diary, was flipping through, and saw the word Hemmings and just about fell over. This was a young girl's recollection. She remembered having a shelf in the Hemings cabin, and that there was some nice dishes, she remembered bed pillow covers that had a ruffled edge, and then. She remembered there was a band box with dogs running on it, which is exactly the kind of thing that a young child might really remember. It was incredible timing. We were in a position to act on it right away, because we were in the process of building that cabin.

Emilie Johnson:
To make it tangible.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
And we should point out, I think it's among just a handful of descriptions of an interior of a slave cabin.

Emilie Johnson:
Of an enslaved person's house. Yes.

Conclusion

David Thorson:
Broadening the scope of our interpretation offers new opportunities for expanding the collection and telling a more complete story of life at Monticello.

Emilie Johnson:
I would say that our focus is on this place during Jefferson's lifetime and the hundreds of people who lived here. It's not going to dry up.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
It gets richer.

Emilie Johnson:
It gets richer, because these are stories that have kept increasing in complexity and nuance over the generations, over the centuries.

Diane Ehrenpreis:
This conversation is open-ended. I always learn something new spending time with my colleagues.

Susan Stein:
Ditto. It's wonderful to talk with Emilie and Diane anytime and as often as possible.

Emilie Johnson:
I'm so grateful to get to learn from Susan and Diane. There is real regard and respect and quite a bit of really good feeling around this table.

We want to thank all of you for tuning into the podcast and to being wonderful colleagues and supporters in your own ways.