A century of things we carried.
A century of things we carried.
Ninety objects that spent their working lives in someone's hands: a milkman's yoke, a conductor's ticket punch, the first phone that lived in a pocket. Each worn, mended, or polished into the shape of a habit. Most come from our own stores; a third have never been shown.
1936 · Bakelite, chrome, cloth
Bought on installments; the family rearranged the parlor so every chair faced it.
1921 · Leather, brass, cotton lining
Forty years of house calls on the east side; the handle is worn to the print of one hand.
1947 · Enameled steel
Chipped at the lip from sixty years of morning taps against the same cast-iron stove.
Thursday evenings are free for everyone, 5 to 9. No booking, just come.
Tickets at the desk; good all day, so leave for lunch and come back.
6 Foundry Lane, Millbrook
Open in Maps
Buses 4 and 11 stop at Foundry Lane. Paid lot on Water Street; bike racks by the door.
The entrance, both galleries, and the washrooms are step-free. Wheelchairs and folding stools at the desk, large-print labels for every show. Questions: (555) 555-0173.
Weekday mornings before we open: an hour with an educator and the handling trolley. Free for city schools, $40 a class for everyone else. Write two weeks ahead.
Nadia Osei, curator of Handle with Care, on the ninety objects and the three she fought hardest to borrow. Meet at the desk; an hour, standing.
Tomas Ferreira, design historian, on five hundred years of the pocket and what we agreed to carry. Forty minutes, then questions.
Talks are free, and on Thursday evenings so is the museum. Seats are first come.
$45
Per year
$75
Per year
Join at the desk, or write to members@vitrine.example.
Built in 1911, the brick hall on Foundry Lane pumped the city's drinking water up from the river, loudly, for sixty years. The pumps went quiet in 1974. The objects arrived in 1994.
The gantry crane that once lifted flywheels still crosses the ceiling of Gallery One. It still works, and we use it every time a show changes.
Vitrine is a small museum with 11,214 objects in its care. Admission covers about a third of what that costs. People who love the place cover the rest.
Support the museum