From Cereal to Silk: Marjorie Merriweather Post at Hillwood's Interwoven
Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens has opened Interwoven: A Tradition of Textiles this summer, running through January 3, 2027. Rather than presenting cloth as static artefact, the exhibition traces how textile work moved through the hands of one family across generations, and how that inheritance still shapes the way we think about craft today.
Portrait of Marjorie Merriweather Post, Frank O. Salisbury, England, 1942 -46. Oil on canvas. Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, acc. no. 51.142
The woman behind the collection led an unusually layered life. Marjorie Merriweather Post inherited the Postum Cereal Company at just 27, following her father's death in 1914, and went on to build it into General Foods Corporation, becoming one of America's first major female business leaders. She used that fortune to fund the arts on a considerable scale, supporting the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center among other institutions.
Afternoon Dress, Purchased in New York City, 1905. Cotton lawn, embroidery, cotton -crocheted lace, cording. Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, acc. no. 48.18. Photographed by Renee Comet.
That same attentiveness to material culture runs through everything she kept. She preserved antique lace, girlhood garments, and pieces stitched by the women who came before her: her mother Ella, her aunt Mollie, her grandmother Caroline. Post treated textiles the way she treated every object she collected, with an eye for skill and detail, but her holdings reveal something closer to lived affection than acquisition.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Wall Hanging (detail). Probably France, late 1 600s -1700s with late 1800s - early 1900s. Additions and modifications. Silk satin, silk embroidery, linen plain weave, gold metallic -wrapped cord and twill, wool twill, silk damask. Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, acc. no. 43.21
All further images as credited in captions.