Katrina Kipper Photographic Collection

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

Katrina Kipper was born to Bessie and Emil Kipper in New York on April 17, 1884. Both Bessie and Emil Kipper immigrated to the United States from Germany. The family moved to Massachusetts, where Emil worked as a cotton goods manufacturer. Katrina attended school until the eighth grade, and later became a well-known antiques dealer based in Accord, Massachusetts. Kipper had clients from all over the country and worked with prominent individuals of the time, including Jessie Gardner, Henry Ford, and Henry Francis Du Pont. Kipper started buying and selling antiques at a time when antiquing was becoming professionalized around the turn of the century. During this time, there was a growing interest in and reverence to the American past, along with an increased pursuit of American art, museums, and cultural institutions. The growth of consumer markets, industrialization, and the availability of leisure time for the upper class accompanied these cultural pursuits. These factors provided the clientele for Kipper’s business. She made a name for herself in the antiques world, once selling over 30,000 dollars of antiques to the Rockefeller Foundation in one day, to furnish and outfit historic buildings in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1940, Kipper was living in Norwell, Massachusetts with her mother and brother, who was a chemist. Kipper passed away in September of 1972.

Sources

Greenfield, B.G. (2009). Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-Century New England. \n Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Social Security Administration. (1935-2014). Social Security Death Index. Retrieved from ancestry.com
U.S. Census Bureau. (1910). United States Federal Census. Retrieved from ancestry.com
U.S. Census Bureau. (1940). United States Federal Census. Retrieved from ancestry.com