Winterthur Museum Collection Search Guide

The Winterthur Museum Collection database uses a full-text search engine to match your terms against a broad range of catalogue fields, including object name, title, creator, materials, technique, subject, inscriptions, place of origin, and description. Use the Keyword Search for quick, broad queries, or open Advanced Search for more targeted results using specific fields.

A few things to know before you start:

• Searches are not case sensitive. Quilt, QUILT, and quilt return identical results.
• The default behavior for multi-word searches is to return records containing any of the words. If any results match the exact multi-word search, they will be boosted in the results ranking above all other results.
• Common punctuation is ignored. Characters such as commas, semicolons, parentheses, hyphens, and most symbols are treated as spaces. coffee-pot and coffeepot may not return identical results — see the Spelling note below.
• Spelling matters. Unlike some search engines, this system does not auto-correct spelling. If a search returns no results, try an alternative spelling. Example: searching coffeepot returns different results than coffee pot.
• Each object belongs to a single Category. If you do not find what you are looking for under one category, try another that might apply. The exceptions now are Estate Objects and Garden Objects.
• Use the “With Images Only” option to limit results to records containing images.
• “On Display Only” limits results to objects presently on display.

Use the main search box to search across all indexed fields at once.

Keep Searches Simple

Keep terms simple. A multi-word search looks for records that contain any of those words across the searchable fields — it does not require all words to appear in the same field. However, combining too many unrelated concepts in one search (for example, plate England creamware) may not always return relevant results, because plate is an object name, England is a place of origin, and creamware is a material — each stored in a separate field. A more effective approach is to enter the most distinctive term in the keyword box and use Advanced Search to specify the other criteria.

Date Searching

Date searches belong in Advanced Search. Do not include years or date ranges in the keyword box; use the Earliest Year and Latest Year fields under Advanced Search instead.

Fields Searchable Through Keyword Search:

• Description
• Subject
• Object Name / Title
• Creator
• Materials
• Techniques
• Place of Origin
• Inscription fields
• Credit Line
• Object Number

Click Advanced Search to filter results using specific catalogue fields. All fields you fill in are combined, so results must satisfy every criterion you enter.

Available Fields

Tips for Advanced Search

Searching Dates and Date Ranges

Searching for dates and date ranges. Enter a four-digit year in Earliest Year, Latest Year, or both. To find objects from a specific decade, enter the decade’s start in Earliest Year and its end in Latest Year (for example, 1850 to 1859). The search uses a permissive overlap — an object dated 1840–1860 will appear in a search for that decade.

Searching by Object Number

Searching by object number. Use this format with leading placeholder zeros where relevant:

####.####.###

Examples:

• 1953.0178.002
• 1963.0700

Object numbers are composed of two or more segments: XXXX.XXXX (Year-Object Number) OR XXXX.XXXX.XXX (Year-Accession Number-Object Number). Enter as much of the information you know.

Multi-part Objects: Objects with multiple components may include letter suffixes:

• 1953.0178.002 A
• 1953.0178.002 B

Enter a space between the last number and the letter. Searching without the suffix returns all related parts. If you are looking for all objects in a given acquisition, enter just the first two number segments (for example, 1963.0700).

Place of Origin Searches

Place of Origin searches a single field. The Place of Origin field simultaneously searches city, state/province, country, region, and continent. You do not need to know in which level a place name is stored. However, if you enter multiple place words (for example, Boston Massachusetts), the search will look for records where those words appear somewhere across all place fields — a simple, single place name (example: Boston) is usually more reliable.

Multi-value Fields

Multi-value fields (Material, Technique). When you enter multiple comma-separated values, results will include objects matching any of those values by default.

Combining Keyword and Advanced Search

Combining Keyword and Advanced Search. You can fill in both the keyword box and Advanced Search fields at the same time. This is a good way to narrow large result sets. The keyword field searches across description and other fields not exposed as individual Advanced Search filters, so it can pick up detail that targeted field searches would miss. Example: to find Winterthur’s ceramic plates decorated with a Boston State House pattern, enter Boston State House in the keyword box, enter plate in the Object Name field, and select Ceramics from the Category list.

The sidebar of the search results page shows facets — counts of categories like Materials and Techniques represented within the current result set. Clicking a facet value filters results to that value; selecting multiple facet values within the same category returns objects with all of the selected values. You can also choose to include or exclude certain facet values from your results set by checking the boxes labeled under “Include” or “Exclude”.

For assistance with the collection database:

• General inquiries: Museum Collection — MuseumCollection@Winterthur.org
• Image requests: this form
• Technical support: Submit your issue