Course Title:
From Sea to Steam: American Furniture to 1830
Instructor:
Jackie Killian
Email:
jackiekillian at hotmail dot com
From Sea to Steam: American Furniture to 1830
Instructor:
Jackie Killian
Email:
jackiekillian at hotmail dot com
Course Outline
Furniture is one of many object types and sources of evidence historians can engage to learn about cultures. The objects with which we live opens a window into our stylistic preferences, lifestyles, values, economic position, geography, and even our religious beliefs. This is also true of the furniture used by people of the past. This course will attempt to make you conversant in the colonial and early national history of the United States using furniture to aid you in telling that story.
Our goal is to equip you with an understanding of the materials, techniques, and processes used to make furniture in this period. It is my hope these tools will help you analyze and understand furniture from earlier or more recent periods. You will learn the language of furniture by examining and sketching pieces firsthand, and we will handle and discuss how woods are cut, finished, and assembled in furniture. You will use your new grammar of furniture to write about it in short blog exercises, a short writing paper, and a final exam.
Using furniture as the intersection, our discussions will cut across cultures from Western Europe to the Far East, span water- and steam-powered technologies, and explore ideas of religion, identity, respectability, leisure, consumption, and exoticism among many other topics. Brief field trips during class time to local institutions like the New-York Historical Society, Brooklyn Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art will introduce you to curatorial staff and their collections that you will study for your sketching assignments and final projects. These collections, as well as that of the Hispanic Society of America, will contextualize the range of furniture produced in the colonial Americas. A day-long field trip to the Yale University Art Gallery and Furniture Study Center will occur during the first few weeks of the semester. This will give you the opportunity to try out your observation and analysis skills. The date for this will be announced during the first course meeting.
Learning about furniture can (and should!) be a life-long process, so do not expect to become experts by the end of the semester. Instead, engage, inquire, and be inspired to continue investigating with the tools you've gained here.
Readings & Discussion
Readings
The Readings page contains many of your weekly readings in PDF version. Those not available online or on our website will be available on the course reserve in the library.
Weekly Assignments
Weekly Assignments I.
Weekly you will post one blog to the Discussion page. You will post on a topic that intersects with or responds to a theme to be discussed in the next class meeting.
Your post could raise a question, formulate a comparison of objects, comment on a reading, and share observations or content beyond the bounds of the time or nationality discussed in the upcoming class. Your posts can bring newly digitized objects or collections to light, and should generally be a place where further knowledge of furniture--historic or contemporary--is exchanged.
These posts are meant to engage you to think broadly and critically about the connections between materials, makers and users, both in the past and present. There is no "right" or "wrong" contribution. Your posts will prime our class conversations, so please read your classmates' posts and prepare to respond to them thoughtfully during class. A sample example is posted currently.
Your posts:
- include 1-2 illustrations or links to your subject
- maximum of 250 words
- must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. the Sunday evening before class
Weekly Assignment II.
To hone your visual identification skills, over the course of ten weeks you will study and sketch furniture, two pieces per week. This is your opportunity to practice "conversing" in the language of furniture as you will on the final exam. The first sketches are due on week 3. The final sketches are due the week before the final exam.
Sketches can be scanned and emailed prior to class, or can be submitted in hard copy. In many cases you will not be able to handle the object, but to the best of your ability, analyze it visually and comment on possible alterations, repairs or replacements. Identify materials, and include the following basic information:
- museum collection, gallery (if applicable), accession number
- dimensions of the object if you are able to measure it
- object form, location of manufacture (and reason for attribution if possible), approximate date, methods of construction, identification of individual parts
Sketches are due at the beginning of each class unless otherwise noted. Alternative methods of documentation for the sketch assignment can be discussed on a case-by-case basis. Please see me with questions.
Grading
Your final grades will be calculated by the following:
10% Class participation
20% Weekly writing assignments (10 total)
20% Weekly sketching assignments (10 total)
20% Writing project
30% Final exam
Exams & Writing Project
The final exam will consist of 10 slides, with 5 minutes for responses per slide. Specifics will be provided closer to the exam time.
The writing project will be 7-10 pages (exclusive of bibliography and images). Options include a catalogue essay on an object in a local collection, a short research paper about an object, maker, regionalism, etc. that could take the form of a small article or blog post. My goal is for you to conduct original research that speaks to your interest I am open to non-traditional formats for achieving that. Topics should be discussed with me and submitted by the sixth week of class. The writing project is due the week before your final exam.
