Nearly 4,000 Phillips House objects now online
A year-long project to catalogue 4,000 objects in the Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts, wraps up this month.
The house's collection tells the story of five generations of the Phillips family in Salem, their extensive travels, and their interests and hobbies. It includes European paintings and bronzes, ethnographic objects from the South Pacific, and a large collection of Chinese export porcelain, including the impressive c. 1867 Rose Medallion Stephen Goodhue Wheatland dinner service totaling 229 pieces.
In June 2009, as part of the Collections Access Project, staff began cataloguing and photographing the nearly 4,000 objects on display in the house. To date, more than 3,800 of the objects have been catalogued and entered into the new collections database, and 3,200 have been photographed. Another 1,200 items from the Phillips collection currently housed at Historic New England's offsite storage facility were also entered into the new system. By the end of August, cataloguing will be completed and the collection will be available to view online through the new searchable Collections Access portal. This feat was accomplished thanks to the team effort of Sarah Sherman, collections cataloguer; Megan MacNeil, registrar; Julie Arrison, site manager; and a diverse group of nine volunteer interns who came from as far as Oklahoma, Missouri, and France.
