RosenThe Rosen Association, Seattle

The heritage collection · RA.1958.3

The Correspondent

A woman at a typewriter who writes the house’s reply to every letter: that it will answer within the week.

The Correspondent at her typewriter. A full-size typewriter of 1957 with a sheet of paper in the platen showing four typed lines, its four rows of round keys reached by the Correspondent’s two hands, which rest with their fingers curved over the keyboard. NO. 117
Atelier drawing 117, 1958The Correspondent’s hands at her typewriter, with the reply on the platen.

1958

The Correspondent was made under Ada Rosen, the founder’s daughter and the second President, to celebrate the house’s first year without a single unanswered letter. It is a seated woman at a full-size typewriter, who feeds a sheet into the platen, types a short letter, reads it over and pulls it out.

The letter reads: Dear Correspondent, thank you for your letter. The house has received it and will reply within the week. Yours faithfully, the Rosen Association. The house has used the same sentence, in the same words, on every acknowledgment it has sent since.

The typewriter is a real one, bought new in 1957, and the Correspondent strikes its keys with her own fingers. The fingers were made by the Atelier’s hand-maker of the day and are, the house believes, the ancestors of every hand it has made since.

Object record

Object type
Typing automaton
Made
The House, Seattle, 1956–1958
Makers
Thirteen, under Ada Rosen, President
Materials and techniques
Steel, brass, wax, silk, glass; a typewriter of 1957
Dimensions
132 cm high seated
Accession number
RA.1958.3
Certificate of provenance
No. 1 906
Location
The House, Seattle. Shown on any visit
Record
Cataloged 1961; revised 2026

Records in the heritage catalog are compiled from the Register of Provenance and the makers’ own notebooks. Where the two disagree, the Register is preferred and the disagreement noted. Return to the collection