The Ordinaries
Everyday objects of the American Revolutionary period—built, gambled, mended, mourned. These are the remnants of the ordinary.
About This Project
The Ordinaries is a project developed by Lara Yeyati Preiss as part of a Parsons × Smithsonian partnership. It examines the American Revolutionary era
through the material traces of everyday life, drawing on objects from the
Smithsonian’s collections — from cooking pots and card games to stitched
samplers and nursing bottles.
Data & Sources
This project uses the Smithsonian American Revolutionary Era Collections
dataset (Revolution Crossroads, CC0-1.0), a curated corpus of 12,667 object
records and nearly 4,000 images dating roughly to 1770–1810 and drawn from
four Smithsonian museums: the National Museum of American History, National
Postal Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and National Portrait Gallery.
