Enfilade

From the press release:

The Decorative Arts Trust is thrilled to announce the five recipients of our 2025 Publishing Grants. The Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama; the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut; The Preservation Society of Newport County in Newport, Rhode Island; and Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine, received Publishing Grants under the ‘Collections and Exhibitions’ category. Dr. Mariah Kupfner received a Publishing Grant for ‘First-Time Authors’.

In August 2026, the publication of Roll Call: 200 Years of Black American Art will be an integral part of the 75th anniversary celebration of the Birmingham Museum of Art. Planned alongside a companion exhibition, the publication will also serve as a comprehensive survey of the Museum’s collection of works by African American and Black American artists who live(d) and work(ed) in America, including its superb holdings of Southern quilts and ceramics.

Elizabeth Foote, Bed rug, ca. 1778, Colchester, CT, hand-embroidered wool on plain woven wool ground (Courtesy of the Connecticut Historical Society, Gift of Mrs. J.H.K. Davis).

In 2022, the Florence Griswold Museum presented the exhibition New London County Quilts & Bed Covers, 1750–1825, which showcased exquisite, rarely-seen quilted petticoats, appliqued bed covers, bed rugs, and stuffed whitework quilts hand-crafted by women and girls of this region of Connecticut. The accompanying publication, set to be completed by April 2027, shares the scholarship generated for the exhibition, addressing an understudied and continuously evolving area of material culture that will open emerging areas of study for rising scholars.

Treasures of the Newport Mansions, the first ever collections catalogue for The Preservation Society of Newport County (PSNC), will span centuries and highlight the organization’s distinctive material content. Among the most significant in the United States, PSNC’s holdings uniquely encompass extraordinary objects within their original historical contexts. Presenting approximately 100 objects, the catalogue, which will be published by February 2027, will highlight advanced research made by experts and early-career scholars across multiple disciplines.

Victoria Mansion’s ‘Bold, Designing Fellows’: Italian Decorative Painters and Scenic Artists in the United States, 1820–1880 is inspired by many years of research on the Bolognese artist Giuseppe Guidicini. Previously unknown, Guidicini was responsible for the 1860 design and decoration of the wall and ceiling paintings that fill Victoria Mansion. The publication is set to be completed by May 2026 and will chronicle Guidicini’s history from his training in Bologna to his accomplishments in New York, Cincinnati, and Richmond.

Publishing Grant recipient Dr. Mariah Kupfner is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Public Heritage at Penn State Harrisburg and earned her PhD from Boston University. She will publish Crafting Womanhood: Needlework, Gender, and Politics in the United States, 1810–1920 with the University of Delaware Press in August 2026. This publication looks closely at gendered textiles, reading them as essential sources of historical meaning and self-making.

Visit the Decorative Arts Trust’s website to learn more about the Publishing Grants program. Applications for the next round of grants are due by 31 March 2026.