Renaissance Revival Furniture (1860–1890)

The dominant style represented in the Haan collection is Renaissance Revival — the grand, historically referential aesthetic that dominated American furniture-making in the decades following the Civil War. Drawing on Italian Renaissance, French Empire, and Baroque influences, Renaissance Revival furniture is characterized by bold architectural forms, elaborate carved ornamentation, incised decoration, porcelain medallion insets, and the use of richly figured walnut, rosewood, and ebonized woods.

This was the furniture of American aspiration during the Gilded Age — made for prosperous families who wanted their interiors to signal education, taste, and connection to the cultural traditions of Europe. In the Haan mansion, these pieces feel entirely at home: the building itself was designed as a gentleman’s country estate, and the furniture was selected by Bob and Ellie Haan to match the ambition of the architecture.

Bedroom Sets

Among the most impressive pieces in the collection are the complete Renaissance Revival bedroom sets — massive, elaborately carved suites of bed, dresser, wardrobe, and washstand that fill the mansion’s upper-floor bedrooms. These sets were the centerpieces of upper-middle-class American domestic interiors of the 1870s and 1880s, and surviving complete examples are increasingly rare. Their scale and carving make them among the most visually commanding objects in the building.

Credenzas and Case Pieces

The collection includes a number of large credenzas — low, cabinet-style sideboards typically used in dining rooms — and other case pieces that display the full vocabulary of Renaissance Revival ornament: carved pediments, arched panels, gilt incised lines, and burl veneer panels that catch the light differently as visitors move through the rooms.

Pier Mirrors

Impressive floor-to-ceiling pier mirrors, originally designed to hang between windows and amplify natural light in formal rooms, are positioned throughout the mansion. Their gilt frames and elaborate crests are among the most decorative objects in the collection and among the most immediately striking to first-time visitors.

The Sewing Machine Cabinet (1875)

One of the more unusual pieces in the collection is an 1875 sewing machine housed in an ornately inlaid cabinet — a reminder that in the Victorian era, even utilitarian objects were expected to contribute to the beauty of a domestic interior. The cabinet’s inlaid surface represents some of the finest decorative woodwork in the collection.

The Wooten Desk

The collection includes a rare Superior Grade Wooten desk — one of the most celebrated American furniture forms of the Victorian era. Patented in 1874 by William S. Wooten of Indianapolis, Indiana, the Wooten desk was designed to organize the correspondence and business affairs of the Gilded Age professional. When open, its elaborately fitted interior reveals dozens of compartments, slots, and drawers behind two large hinged wings. When closed, it presents a single upright cabinet of imposing dignity. Superior Grade Wootens are among the rarest surviving examples — the Haan’s piece is a significant find with a direct Indiana connection, given that Wooten himself was an Indianapolis manufacturer.

Eight Monumental Clocks

One of the most distinctive features of the Haan mansion is the collection of eight large floor and wall-mounted clocks displayed throughout the building. Each is a significant antique in its own right, and together they create an experience unlike any other museum in Indiana — visitors find themselves oriented not just by room and collection, but by the steady tick and occasional chime of living mechanisms that have measured time for well over a century.

The Tiffany Mercury Clock (1893)

The most scientifically remarkable clock in the collection is an 1893 8-foot hanging Tiffany clock that uses vials of mercury to compensate for temperature changes — a precision timekeeping mechanism that maintains accuracy across seasonal shifts in temperature by using the expansion and contraction of mercury to adjust the pendulum’s effective length. It is both a scientific instrument and a decorative masterwork, and one of the most discussed objects in the building.

The Gothic Clock (1910)

A 10-foot gothic clock hand-carved in Indianapolis from 4,000-year-old wood stands as one of the most architecturally dramatic pieces in the collection. The wood — ancient beyond imagining, predating the Roman Empire — gives the piece a gravitas that goes beyond its considerable decorative presence. Its Gothic Revival form echoes the ecclesiastical architecture of medieval Europe while its material connects it to a time long before any of the traditions it references.

The R.J. Horner Clock (1890)

A 10-foot R.J. Horner clock featuring winged griffins and rat-tail maidens in its carved ornamentation represents the most exuberant end of the collection’s decorative range. R.J. Horner was one of the most celebrated New York furniture makers of the late 19th century, known for exactly this kind of elaborate, fantastical carving. This piece is among the most photographed objects in the mansion.

The Ithaca Calendar Wall Clock (1866)

A six-foot hanging Ithaca perpetual calendar wall clock from 1866 adds a functional dimension to the collection’s horological range. Ithaca Calendar Clocks were celebrated for their ability to display not just time but day, date, and month — automatically adjusting for months of different lengths and for leap years. This one is a particularly fine surviving example from the company’s early production.

Additional Clocks

The remaining four clocks in the collection represent a range of American and European clockmaking traditions from the 19th century, including tall case (grandfather) clocks and large wall-mounted regulators. Together the eight clocks constitute a significant collection of Victorian-era horology within a single historic interior — an aspect of the museum that rewards visitors with any interest in mechanical antiques.

Two Antique Orchestral Music Boxes

The Haan mansion is one of very few places in Indiana where visitors can hear antique orchestral music boxes play — not as a recording or demonstration, but as the original instruments themselves, operating exactly as they were designed to more than a century ago.

The American Regina Music Box (c. 1900)

The American piece is a 1900 Orchestral Regina, manufactured in New Jersey and playing 27-inch diameter metal discs — among the largest disc music boxes ever made for domestic use. The Regina was the most prestigious American music box brand of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the orchestral models, with their large resonating cases and powerful tone, were the audiophile equipment of their era. The museum’s example plays a selection of discs, and the experience of hearing one is genuinely transporting.

The Swiss Bremond Music Box

The Swiss piece is a B.A. Bremond orchestral music box — a Geneva-made instrument of extraordinary complexity, featuring bells, a drum, castanets, a little flute piccolo, and organ pipes, all driven by a single cylinder mechanism. B.A. Bremond was one of the most celebrated Swiss music box manufacturers of the 19th century, and orchestral models with this combination of instruments are among the rarest and most collectible examples surviving. Hearing it play is one of the genuinely memorable experiences the Haan offers.

The World’s Fair Weller Pottery Vases

Three of the most historically significant objects in the entire museum are not furniture at all — they are massive Weller pottery vases that have stood in the mansion since before it arrived in Lafayette, Indiana. Their presence connects the building directly to its origin at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair in a way nothing else in the collection can.

Weller Pottery had the only operating pottery at the 1904 World’s Fair, where the Haan Mansion served as the Connecticut State Building. Weller displayed five massive vases at the Fair; the three largest are now in the mansion — where they have remained, in one form or another, since the Fair itself. The largest of the three is the centerpiece of the collection:

The Aurelian Vase (7 feet tall) — Drawing Room

The 7-foot tall Weller Aurelian vase displayed in the Drawing Room is the single most celebrated object in the Haan Museum. Decorated in the Aurelian style — a dark, rich slip-painted technique featuring dramatic floral or botanical motifs on a deep brown or black ground, highlighted with gold — this vase won the Gold Medal for the Arts at the 1904 World’s Fair. It is widely considered one of the finest pieces of American art pottery ever produced, and it is one of only a handful of objects in any Indiana museum to have received a major international award at the moment of its creation.

The fact that it stands today in the very building where it won that medal — a building that was itself transported from St. Louis to Lafayette after the Fair — makes it uniquely irreplaceable. There is no comparable object in Indiana, and very few in the United States.

The Two Companion Vases

The two companion Weller vases, slightly smaller than the Aurelian but still monumental in scale, are displayed elsewhere in the mansion. Together, the three vases give visitors a sense of the ambition and craftsmanship that Weller brought to the World’s Fair — and the extraordinary care with which the Haan has preserved them.

The Grand Piano

A grand piano is displayed in one of the mansion’s formal rooms, contributing to the experience of the building as a living home rather than a static museum. The piano was a central feature of upper-middle-class American domestic life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and its presence in the mansion is both historically appropriate and aesthetically powerful — a reminder that this was a house where music was made, not just collected.