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Help from Friends Decorating what became a 175-room house at Winterthur was an enormous undertaking, and du Pont worked with a variety of people to create his interiors. The person who assisted him the most with decorating decisions was a talented family friend, Bertha King Benkard (fig. 4) . She knew both H. F. du Pont and his sister, Louise du Pont Crowninshield, and assisted Louise with her restoration of Eleutherian Mills, the first du Pont family home in Delaware. She devoted a great deal of time helping du Pont with every detail in arranging the rooms in the expanded house, visiting Winterthur some fifty-four times over a twenty-year period. The artisans who were most closely associated with fabricating the curtains at Winterthur were employed by the firm of Ernest LoNano (fig. 5) . The company, based in New York City, first became known through their association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1910s. Over the course of the twentieth century, their client list included numerous historic houses and museums. The firm’s involvement making curtains, bedhangings, and upholstery covers for the Winterthur house was their largest commission. Fig. 4. Bertha Benkard (standing) in the Winterthur Conservatory with H. F. du Pont (seated, left), 1935. Fig. 5. Ernest LoNano label. — 113 —