After Counter Space opened, an AP reporter brought it to our
attention that a reader was disputing the attribution of a brown
paper bag on display in the exhibition. Our label recognized
Charles Stilwell as the designer, noting a patent registered in
1883 to Union Paper Bag Machine Company. (Our bag, a modern
example of this well-established form, was manufactured in 2005
by Duro Bag Manufacturing Co.) Sitting in the very first case in
the gallery, alongside sugar cubes (developed in the early
1870s) and a Catharine Beecher drawing of a kitchen storage wall
(1869), this bag was meant to represent standardization as an
early defining feature of the modern kitchen. Because design
attribution, especially for the Humble Masterpieces in our
collection, can be a sticky pursuit, we fully acknowledged that
our label might not tell the complete story of this familiar
object, and took the AP query as a prompt to hit the primary
sources (avoiding the mess of “histories” offered on so many
websites). Since it’s actually