In praise of America: American decorative arts, 1650-1830 ; fifty years of discovery since the 1929 Girl Scouts loan exhibition

Arts & Photography

Cooper, Wendy A.

Decorative Arts & Design

Knopf: distributed by Random House

Loaded with beautiful photos and info. 214 pages, 9 by 11" 2002

An American Vision: Henry Francis Du Pont's Winterthur Museum

Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Gleason, Tara Louise

John, Katharine A.

Natl Gallery of Art

The variety of New England furniture--in form, in origin, and in ornament--is beautifully demonstrated in New England Furniture at Winterthur. Collectors, dealers, and curators have recently amassed an impressive array of new information on such topics as the introduction of English styles to New England, regional differences within New England cabinetmaking, and construction techniques of individual craftsmen. Their discoveries have led to this reassessment of the extraordinary collection at Winterthur. It comprehensively explores the furniture industry of New England, detailing the impact of urban communities, especially Boston, as well as the pervasiveness of regionalism, which has attracted fresh attention from scholars. The export trade and the role of specialists, particularly upholsterers, are also discussed. The book presents informative essays on each furniture form and detailed entries on 225 individual objects.

New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Winterthur Book)

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Evans, Nancy Goyne

Richards, Nancy E.

Podmaniczky, Michael S.

Antiques & Collectibles

Winterthur Museum

Paint, Pattern, and People explores the fascinating and diverse furniture of southeastern Pennsylvania through the people who made, owned, inherited, and collected it. Delving into the cultures and creativity of the area's inhabitants, primarily those of British and Germanic heritage, this comprehensive work looks closely at localisms and regionalisms of form, ornament, and construction that were influenced by ethnicity, religious affiliation, settlement patterns, socioeconomic status, and the skills of the craftsmen.
William Penn's policy of religious tolerance attracted people of various faiths and ethnic backgrounds, making Pennsylvania the most culturally diverse of the thirteen colonies. Through the study of well-documented furniture, fraktur, needlework, paintings, and architecture produced by this mixed multitude, the region's great diversity comes into focus. Paint, Pattern and People is a significant contribution to the literature in the field, presenting new scholarship as well as never-before-published furniture and related objects.

Paint, Pattern, and People: Furniture of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1725-1850

History

Minardi, Lisa

Americas

University of Pennsylvania Press

During the first four decades of the last century, America was mesmerized by the classical world. And never before has a book so thoroughly examined the period's diversity of thought and material production to demonstrate the variety of ways that nineteenth-century Americans used, misused, and even abused the lessons of antiquity in the arts and decorative arts. To an extraordinary extent, Americans embraced classicism at the beginning of the nineteenth century both as a fashionable new international style, which had its European beginnings in the eighteenth-century excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and as a distinctive expression of America's own emulation of classical precedents in government, ideal beauty, education, and the decorative arts. This book charmingly investigates the multifaceted impact of classical political, intellectual, and aesthetic values on early nineteenth-century American culture through a close examination of approximately 225 representative objects from this aesthetically brilliant period, including paintings, sculpture, furniture, silver, glass, ceramics, textiles, and printed materials. Focusing particularly on the type of objects with which Americans decorated and furnished their homes, this book examines not only the superbly designed and fashioned products made for the well-to-do, but also those objects that were mass-produced and more widely sought by a burgeoning middle class. From elegant Grecian couches with Roman paw feet, to diminutive pressed glass salts ornamented with classical chariots and cornucopia, few aspects of American material life escaped the classical craze. The text of this fascinating volume delves into the symbolic and material significance of classicism in American life, the adaptation antique forms and motifs by American craftsmen and consumers, and the vernacularization of classicism. The material production of this lavish and visually exciting period provides an illuminating look at the lives and homes of a wide range of Americans in the early days of our republic.

Classical Taste in America 1800-1840

History & Criticism

Abbeville Pr

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Books by Cooper, Wendy A.