Over the years the museum-curator author of this story has been asked numerous times what her (my) favorite collection item is. About 4-5 items immediately spring to mind and this one of those favorites is not only a rare item, but it has a fascinating backstory.
Several years ago we received an email from a gentleman in Japan, who told us he had a business in Japan manufacturing aluminum roller window shades. If we correctly understood the reason for his communication, it seems some American architects went to Japan around the turn of the last century and built American-style homes similar to the now-historic homes Stewart Hartshorn built in the Short Hills historic district. Apparently those homes are now national treasures owned by the Japanese government. Those homes were apparently also fitted with Hartshorn’s roller window shades and this gentleman was asked to reproduce them for the deteriorating ones in the homes. As noted, though, his business made aluminum shade rollers and he needed to know how Hartshorn’s wooden shade rollers were made.
Not long afterwards we were graced with a visit from the inquirer, who looked through our collection of Hartshorn roller shades. We also took him to a house in the historic district that is paneled with the wood dowels from the shades. He was delighted to see both those artifacts, but it seems it didn’t give him the information he needed to recreate the shade rollers.
A couple of years later we were contacted by another man from the same business, about the same issue. I was excited to tell him that in the interim since the other gentleman’s visit we now had in the collection an item that should answer all their questions…a Hartshorn salesman’s sample kit for his roller window shades. The best part of the kit was the cutaway wood dowel that showed what was inside the dowel (barely visible on the top left side of the top dowel) and through the detailed photos we sent he was finally able to get answers to their questions. After we found a US manufacturer willing to replicate the hollowed-out dowel, everything was resolved and we assume they were finally able to make copies of the originals.
How did we get the sample kit? On eBay, where it seems you can find just about everything you could ever hope to find–and some things you didn’t know you wanted to find, such as this kit.
Oh, and do you see the small deer in the logo on the label on the dowel in the kit? That represents a small deer called a hart. And those antlers are the “hart’s horn(s)”…and that is how the family pronounces their last name…and they would appeciate it if you would pronounce it that way, too.