Proposal
My approach to the study of American furniture is rooted in extant material and documentary evidence, as well as theories of material, cultural, social and Atlantic world history. Upon completing this class, I anticipate that students will have a firm grasp of the materials and methods used to construct wooden furniture made in the pre-industrial (steam-powered) era of the United States. They will understand the varied and shifting factors that contributed to the preference of certain forms and styles at specific intersections of location and time.
Forms, materials, and processes are the framework on which the course develops. The first two weeks introduce the alphabet of furniture: concepts of ecology, timber management, wood identification, tools, material processing, and methods of construction. These initial concepts will be reviewed weekly throughout the semester to reinforce habits of looking and identification so that students develop a vocabulary and facility with the grammar of furniture applicable to this period, and any other. By utilizing an Atlantic World approach, furniture is viewed as one product of parallel emigration and settlement of the Dutch, English, Scandinavians, Germans, French, and Spanish to colonial America. A week studying furniture made in these countries illustrates the continuity of craft traditions in a new land, with new materials.
Students will understand that character and sequence of settlement in areas of colonial America dictate localisms or regionalisms of form or ornament. Because the initial classes are driven by sequence of settlement, furniture made in Plymouth is analyzed in conjunction with that of New Netherlands, Bermuda, Jamaica, the Tidewater, and mid-Atlantic. The subsequent class analyzes further development of these areas using inventories and objects to emphasize differences as well as broader similarities in each region's material culture. Inventories also introduce the idea that furniture had a place depending on its function, and that both polite and unpolished examples of furniture could coexist in a single household; they were not bound by spatially by notions of "urban vs. rural", "core vs. periphery", or "town vs. country". An Atlantic World approach further establishes the nexus of commerce that connected colonies with respective ruling nations, and one another, in this period. Students will understand how finished furniture goods are another example of these water-borne networks.
Chronological progression through time illustrates the continued presence of external cultural influences from southeast Asia via indirect importation of goods or diffusion of an Asian decorative vocabulary through French, Dutch, and English furniture. Waves of German, Scottish, and Irish immigrants in the 1720s-60s who quickly move westward from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and coastal Virginia and North Carolina deposit new fashions, forms and cabinetmaking traditions in the Shenandoah Valley and Piedmont. In the first established colonies, improving living conditions results in the creation, adaption, or extinction of certain forms furniture forms. Stylistic adoption is viewed as the results of economic, environmental, social, and geographic factors, including the influence of makers as well as consumers. Prints and bound books are analyzed as arbiters of fashionable or practical knowledge with discussions of Serlio and Vrederman de Vries, Stalker and Parker, Chippendale, Ince & Mayhew, Hall, etc.
The final three class sessions continue the themes of improving living conditions and the new and changing furniture forms created to respond to needs of work and leisure. Intersecting with this are new systems of technology and power that industrialize aspects of cabinetmaking, and mobilize transportation networks throughout the western and southern territories. Concurrently, spread of settlement and waves of new immigrants change the laboring landscape of furniture-making in both early colonial cities on the eastern seaboard, and those further inland. The class concludes examining networks of cotton agriculture that connect the Lower Mississippi Valley and the hubs of economy in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and to London, Bristol, and Manchester beyond.
Forms, materials, and processes are the framework on which the course develops. The first two weeks introduce the alphabet of furniture: concepts of ecology, timber management, wood identification, tools, material processing, and methods of construction. These initial concepts will be reviewed weekly throughout the semester to reinforce habits of looking and identification so that students develop a vocabulary and facility with the grammar of furniture applicable to this period, and any other. By utilizing an Atlantic World approach, furniture is viewed as one product of parallel emigration and settlement of the Dutch, English, Scandinavians, Germans, French, and Spanish to colonial America. A week studying furniture made in these countries illustrates the continuity of craft traditions in a new land, with new materials.
Students will understand that character and sequence of settlement in areas of colonial America dictate localisms or regionalisms of form or ornament. Because the initial classes are driven by sequence of settlement, furniture made in Plymouth is analyzed in conjunction with that of New Netherlands, Bermuda, Jamaica, the Tidewater, and mid-Atlantic. The subsequent class analyzes further development of these areas using inventories and objects to emphasize differences as well as broader similarities in each region's material culture. Inventories also introduce the idea that furniture had a place depending on its function, and that both polite and unpolished examples of furniture could coexist in a single household; they were not bound by spatially by notions of "urban vs. rural", "core vs. periphery", or "town vs. country". An Atlantic World approach further establishes the nexus of commerce that connected colonies with respective ruling nations, and one another, in this period. Students will understand how finished furniture goods are another example of these water-borne networks.
Chronological progression through time illustrates the continued presence of external cultural influences from southeast Asia via indirect importation of goods or diffusion of an Asian decorative vocabulary through French, Dutch, and English furniture. Waves of German, Scottish, and Irish immigrants in the 1720s-60s who quickly move westward from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and coastal Virginia and North Carolina deposit new fashions, forms and cabinetmaking traditions in the Shenandoah Valley and Piedmont. In the first established colonies, improving living conditions results in the creation, adaption, or extinction of certain forms furniture forms. Stylistic adoption is viewed as the results of economic, environmental, social, and geographic factors, including the influence of makers as well as consumers. Prints and bound books are analyzed as arbiters of fashionable or practical knowledge with discussions of Serlio and Vrederman de Vries, Stalker and Parker, Chippendale, Ince & Mayhew, Hall, etc.
The final three class sessions continue the themes of improving living conditions and the new and changing furniture forms created to respond to needs of work and leisure. Intersecting with this are new systems of technology and power that industrialize aspects of cabinetmaking, and mobilize transportation networks throughout the western and southern territories. Concurrently, spread of settlement and waves of new immigrants change the laboring landscape of furniture-making in both early colonial cities on the eastern seaboard, and those further inland. The class concludes examining networks of cotton agriculture that connect the Lower Mississippi Valley and the hubs of economy in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and to London, Bristol, and Manchester beyond.
Lesson plan
Week 1: Learning the components
Week 2: Joining parts
Week 3: Building furniture
Week 4: Field trip
Week 5: Early settlement in colonial America, 1680-1730: regions
Week 6: Style I. 1680-1730: Luxury and exoticism: cultural influences of Asia
Week 7: Style II.: 1730-1780:Cultural localisms and craft traditions
Week 8: Spreading settlement & new immigrants, 1730-1780
Week 9: Style I: Print culture, 1730-1780
Week 10: Style II: Regional interpretations of new fashions, 1730-1780
Week 11: Classical Influences I.: The New Republic, 1780-1820
Week 12: Classical Influences II. New Settlements: 1780-1820
Week 13: Classical Taste in the Gulf South: 1820 and later
Week 14: FINAL EXAM
- Why study furniture?
- Inventory - forms present? Function of these? Location? What this tells us about patterns of life?
- Materials: wood, metals, textiles
- Processing
Week 2: Joining parts
- Review materials and processing
- Types of construction: joinery (what it achieves) vs. cabinetmaking (its advantages over joinery).
- Finer points of construction, how to identify it, material preference
- Breaking forms into parts
Week 3: Building furniture
- Review previous two weeks
- 1st settlements in Atlantic World - intersection of people in place
- Contemporary furniture traditions in England, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain: Serlio, Vrederman de Vries
- Common forms: seating, casework, tables
Week 4: Field trip
- Practice identification of materials, processes, construction
- See common forms across region
Week 5: Early settlement in colonial America, 1680-1730: regions
- Plymouth vs. Tidewater vs. Bermuda
- New Netherlands vs. New Sweden
- Bermuda vs. mid-Atlantic
Week 6: Style I. 1680-1730: Luxury and exoticism: cultural influences of Asia
- Commerce and commodities drive culture
- Adaptation through diffusion from East to West (Stalker & Parker)
- Rise of new forms: looking glasses/dressing boxes, card tables, desks
- Alteration of existing forms: Chinese influence on chairs
Week 7: Style II.: 1730-1780:Cultural localisms and craft traditions
- Decoration: southeastern PA
- Forms: bombe chests of Boston
- Style: Dunlap cabinetmakers of NH
Week 8: Spreading settlement & new immigrants, 1730-1780
- White Mountains: Vermont, New Hampshire
- mid-Atlantic: Pennsylvania, Shenandoah Valley, Piedmont
- South: Charleston, Savannah
- Guest lecturer: A. Nicholas Powers, Curator of Collections, Museum of Shenandoah Valley
Week 9: Style I: Print culture, 1730-1780
- Continental influence: Daniel Marot, Juste-Aurele Meissonnier, Francis Hoppenhaupt, Francois Cuvillies
- English interpretations: Inigo Jones, Batty Langley, Thomas Chippendale, Thomas Johnson
Week 10: Style II: Regional interpretations of new fashions, 1730-1780
- Explore regional interpretations and resistance to Rococo style
- Furniture for leisure or sport: card tables, work tables
- Immigrant craftsmen
Week 11: Classical Influences I.: The New Republic, 1780-1820
- Print sources: Percier et Fontaine, Adam, Pain, Heppelwhite, Sheraton, Ince & Mayhew, Halfpenny, Benjamin
- Adoption and resistence
- Changing technology
Week 12: Classical Influences II. New Settlements: 1780-1820
- Settlement in Lower Mississippi River Valley
- French and Spanish antecedents
- Regional forms
Week 13: Classical Taste in the Gulf South: 1820 and later
- New Orleans, Natchez as case studies
- Relationships between cotton planters, commercial merchants and cabinetmakers
- Export and transportation: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston
Week 14: FINAL EXAM