In 1946, Stanley and Polly Stone of Fox Point, Wisconsin, began collecting decorative arts, a passion they would maintain for the rest of their lives. The Stone's particular interests centered around early American furniture and historical prints, and seventeenth and eighteenth century British pottery. By the early 1960s their collection was impressive enough to capture the attention of Charles Montgomery, then Senior Research Fellow and former Director of the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum pottery (click here to read Mr. Stone’s 1983 recollections of the early collecting years). At Montgomery's urging the Stone's established a the Chipstone Foundation with the dual purpose of preserving and interpreting their collection, and stimulating research and education in the decorative arts. Following Stanley Stone's death in 1987, the foundation was activated by an initial endowment provided by Mrs. Stone. Since then, Chipstone has steadily expanded its collections and broadened its support of the decorative arts world.

To many decorative arts enthusiasts, Chipstone is a familiar name but the foundation’s precise mission or purpose remains something of an enigma—and understandably so given Chipstone’s primary and longtime role as a private collection. Stanley and Polly Stone housed their wonderful collection in a colonial revival brick home they named Chipstone (click to discover the origin of name), which was built on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. More than just inspired collectors, the Stones also had the foresight to create a foundation dedicated to promoting American decorative arts scholarship through the sharing of their artifacts and the support of significant decorative arts projects and publications at other institutions (click here to read Chipstone’s Statement of Purpose)

Since Polly Stone’s death in 1995 at the age of 97, the foundation has steadily redefined its aims so as to more fully contribute to the field and several exciting new directions are now being pursued.Chipstone sits in the small, residential neighborhood of Fox Point, and therefore one fundamental faced in recent years was how to provide public access to this important collection. Loans to other institutions have been one viable way of sharing parts of the collections but in 1999 a more permanent solution was found in a new partnership between Chipstone and the Milwaukee Art Museum (click to seen new Santiago Calatrava addition) all of the American Collections Galleries, which opened in May 2001 Through this joint venture, Chipstone’s significant holdings are now on view to the public at the Art Museum, which along with the associated Layton Art Collection already has a wonderfully deep and diverse collection of American decorative arts, from the seventeenth century on up to the present (click for gallery shots).

A second major venture for the foundation lies in an expanded program of Chipstone publications, which includes important annual journals in the fields of furniture and ceramics studies, and a small number of major theoretical and collecting monographs (click on the publications link above to view and preview Chipstone’s publications). These works reflect the foundation’s desire to enliven and enrich the level of scholarly discourse in the decorative arts world. Yet another new development at Chipstone involves a significant association with the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1998 Dr. Anne Smart Martin, formerly of Winterthur and Colonial Williamsburg, was named the Stanley and Polly Stone Professor of American Decorative Arts, a position funded by Chipstone. Anne’s arrival proved to be a wonderful catalyst for the study of material culture at the university, specifically through the creation of an academic program that broadly explores multiple approaches to the study of American material culture by bringing together scholars from other departments at the University, including History, Art, African Studies, Design, and Literature (click for information of the UWMadison program and for access to the university’s decorative arts digital library site). Finally, Chipstone aims to explore the digital realm on our website, chipstone.org. Through the creation of fully accessible virtual exhibitions of major decorative arts installations, assorted digital databases, and electronic collections catalogues, the foundation literally and figuratively hopes to promote—as with the aforementioned project—ever newer ways to look at old things.