Closes October 6, 2024

Against the Grain

Against the Grain brings together objects in the collection made from wood. This featured exhibit explores the wide-ranging dimensions of working with the material and surveys the themes that emerge as artists and craftspeople grapple with its possibilities.

Featured Artifacts

Explore Against the Grain to see the following artifacts:

The Rosary refers to the set of traditional prayers central to Catholic devotional life. Derived from the Latin rosarium (“crown of roses”), it also refers to the tactile string of beads which helps facilitate meditation and count the constituent prayers. Kept for decades in the small mission chapel of the Bailly homestead, this large rosary belonged to Frances Rose Howe (1851-1917), granddaughter of Joseph Bailly, who maintained the devout Catholic faith of her family in a largely Protestant area. The beads, including the seven large rose blossoms where the Lord’s Prayer was recited, are poignantly made from rosewood, a dense and aromatic wood that is often polished and fashioned for purposes with regular tactile handling, such as luxury furniture handles, fountain pens, chess sets, and guitar fretboards.

This butter paddle belonged to Mary Ann "Mollie" Ramsey DeCrow (1835-1879) and was donated by her daughter, Vona Deliliah DeCrow Donald in 1953. The PoCo Muse Collection is also the home of twenty-four annual diaries of John Brooks DeCrow (1833-1923), Morgan Township farmer and Mollie’s husband, spanning thirty-one years from 1859 to 1890. Little is mentioned about Mollie in the diaries, but they provide an incredible glimpse into the routines of a nineteenth-century farming family, which helps humanize this seemingly-simple, yet elegant tool used by "a quiet, unassuming, patient and consistent woman."

Vinol "Vin" Hannell and his wife Hazel moved from Chicago to the Chesterton area during the 1930s and helped establish the Furnessville artist community. In Indiana, Vin turned his focus from painting to wood sculpture and helped support the couple’s successful ceramic studio until his death in 1964. This curiously undated sculpture was created here but harkens back to an earlier period in Chicago when the couple’s work featured similar religious iconography of the Christian saints Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus. Notice how the inherent direction and pattern of the wood’s grain seems to direct the forms of the figures.