Hadiya Williams (Born 1978, Washington, DC; active Washington, DC) is a multidisciplinary designer with experience in graphic arts, surface design, and ceramics. Nicole Crowder (Born 1985, Nuremberg, Germany; active Saint Paul, Minnesota) is known for her upholstery and furniture designs. Their collaborative installation “The Offering” presents a vignette of Black family life centered upon a dining room.
Nicole Crowder and Hadiya Williams, Installation of “The Offering” in Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution
The six place settings and chairs around the table are references to the six decades, from 1910 to 1970, during which record numbers of African Americans departed the US South for northern states as part of the Great Migration. The tablescape and room are meant to evoke a landing space, recalling moments of arrival for African Americans who undertook these migrations and found refuge in places to stop and gather. Through the act of homemaking, Crowder and Williams’s “offering” conveys how mementos, carried along the journey to a new home, could reconnect families and provide a sense of belonging amid disorienting displacement. Handsewn geometric textiles suggest routes and patterns of movement, while lushly upholstered seats and handmade ceramic objects function as portals into past home lives.
Textile design, clay work, and installation by Hadiya Williams, Black Pepper Paperie Co. Upholstery, fabrication, and installation by Nicole Crowder, Nicole Crowder Upholstery. Research by Kimberly E. Springle, GTMS Legacy Enterprises, public historian and cultural preservationist. Dining table fabrication by Lawrence Moore. Heavy Paper Co. Books and historical magazines provided by BLK MKT Vintage. Textile printing by Spoonflower. Curtain fabrication by Soraya Wright. Hutch and radio by M.O.B. Vintage, Washington, DC.
This installation is made possible with additional support from F. Schumacher & Co.