From Maps to Mermaids: Fort Pitt Museum’s Carved Powder Horn

Due to popular demand, the Fort Pitt Museum, part of the Smithsonian-affiliated Senator John Heinz History Center museum system, will extend its From Maps to Mermaids: Carved Powder Horns in Early America exhibition through the end of 2018.

The exhibition, which will be on display through Dec. 31, showcases delicately carved powder horns and explores the stories behind them.

Used by soldiers on the American frontier to keep gunpowder dry, powder horns also served as a blank canvas on which they could leave their mark. Soldiers etched names, dates, maps, war records, and whimsical figures into the objects. Surviving in large numbers, carved powder horns represent early American folk art in its purest form.

A dozen new artifacts from the collection of Jay Hopkins will be displayed in the exhibit in early September. The new artifacts represent powder horns made by professional horners, combmakers, and turners in a common style used in the mid- to late-18th century from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas.