Featured Events

During Hagley Members Holiday Shopping Days, Hagley members receive a 20 percent off everything in the store (with certain exceptions) and free gift wrapping for purchases more than $25.

Special offer for current and new members!

This holiday season, enjoy the many benefits of Hagley membership with this Black Friday special. 

Experience the du Pont ancestral home decorated for the holidays and the “Magic of Miniatures” exhibition, featuring a whimsically detailed dollhouse inhabited by miniature teddy bears! 

Bring your family and friends to enjoy the holidays at Hagley.

On Sunday, November 25, 2018, more than 700 Museum Stores representing all fifty states, ten countries, and three continents will offer .relaxing, inspired shopping inside your favorite museums and cultural institutions.

Facing a military of unprecedented size after World War II, private industry stepped in to transform the military during the Cold War. 

Sound is produced by vibrations.

Join one of our Hagley guides for an introductory tour of Hagley’s patent model collection.

Bring the kids to take photos with Santa! Santa will make appearances from 10 to 11 a.m., 1 to 2 p.m., and 3 to 4 p.m.

Enjoy a rare opportunity to see Eleutherian Mills, the first du Pont family home built in America, dressed for the holidays and illuminated with softly glowing lights.

DOMESTICATING DISABILITY: THE CREATION OF ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR DISABLED HOMEMAKERS IN THE POST-WWII U.S.

This analysis of gender, technology, and disability will explore the creation and implementation of assistive devices for disabled homemakers in the post-World War II United States. In the two decades following the war’s end, new government funding and institutional support facilitated the development of new technologies, such as wheeled tables, lightweight pots, adjustable shelves, and accessible aprons that aimed to assist disabled women carry out work inside of the home and to fulfill their socially-prescribed family roles as mothers and wives. Many of these devices were created as part of larger vocational rehabilitation efforts that enjoyed increasing support in this era. Although vocational rehabilitation had historically focused on male veterans and wage earners, it was gradually expanded to include homemakers amidst the postwar marriage boom and baby boom.

Invention Convention will explore how to survive in outer space.

A NEW DEAL FOR DIRECT SALES: HOW DIRECT SALES FIRMS HELPED CREATE MODERN NON-EMPLOYMENT, 1910–1935

Direct sales firms utilize a model of independent labor that can be traced back to the peddlers of the colonial period. With the creation of the New Deal, however, direct sales executives began to realize the value of independent contractors as a source of labor potentially free from the new financial and regulatory obligations that would be imposed on employers.

Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) rose from modest means as the son of a peddler to meteoric wealth at the helm of Sears, Roebuck. Yet his most important legacy stands not upon his business acumen but on the pioneering changes he introduced to the practice of philanthropy.

POLICING FAKES: EARLY TRADEMARK REGULATION IN THE U.S. 

This paper examines the problem of counterfeit goods in the antebellum years, contextualizing the rise of these products and their prosecution by the state within the "freewheeling marketplace" described by Stephen Mihm, Ed Balleisen, and others. Through several case studies, the chapter enumerates the issues at stake in the first trademark infringement lawsuits in the US, including the economic anxieties prompted by the Panic of 1837, the tenuous social position of the middle class, competition between domestic and foreign manufacturers, and the unregulated commercial marketplace. The judges in these lawsuits moralized economic behavior in ways that mirrored then-emergent credit reporting structures, infusing middle-class standards of behavior into commerce.  As the state struggled to keep pace, early regulatory measures adopted similar moral standards to separate legitimate from illegitimate competition.

THE SYNTHETICS REVOLUTION AND THE SENSES

This paper examines the synthetics revolution in fashion and fibers within the context of the new field of the history of the senses.  The story of the synthetics revolution—the introduction of man-made and test-tube fibers into the textile-fashion supply chain—has most often been told as the story of heroic inventors or the story of the judicious management investment in R&D.  In reality, DuPont and other fiber makers of the mid to late twentieth century were also innovative marketers who invested heavily in product development, advertising, motivational research, and promotion.  Those efforts, in turn, attempted to tap into and capitalize on the hopes, desires, and concerns of consumers on matters of comfort and convenience.