Three generations of the Dominy family of East Hampton, New York functioned as craftsmen from ca. 1760 to ca. 1850.  Working in wood and metal, they produced clocks and furniture and repaired thousands of pocket watches.  Direct descendants of the Dominy craftsmen kept together the shop equipment, tools, and manuscript material on their original site until 1946, thus preserving the only complete record of craftsmen working in colonial America and the New Republic.  Much of this material is now relocated to the Winterthur Museum.

UW-Madison's Digital Collections Center, in collaboration with Winterthur Museum and Libraries, the Chipstone Foundation, and Dominy scholar Charles F. Hummel, is now making these archival materials and related resources publicly available online.

Phase One of the project is now live.  Currently you can find manuscript materials, images of watchpapers, a video-taped lecture by Charles Hummel about the Dominy craftsmen, articles by Carl Bopp and Charles Hummel, and more.

A future addition to the project will be an enlarged digital edition of With Hammer in Hand, the major scholarly publication on the Dominy craftsmen by Charles F. Hummel.

As usual with a newly launched project, we appreciate your feedback and notice of any glitches you might encounter.  And we hope you will help pass the word about the existence of this new resource to your researchers.

Best regards,

--Linda

Linda Duychak

Kohler Art Library

University of Wisconsin, Madison