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Originally published in 1996. In Making Furniture in Preindustrial America Edward S. Cooke Jr. offers a fresh and appealing cross-disciplinary study of the furnituremakers, social structure, household possessions, and surviving pieces of furniture of two neighboring New England communities. Drawing on both documentary and artifactual sources, Cooke explores the interplay among producer, process, and style in demonstrating why and how the social economies of these two seemingly similar towns differed significantly during the late colonial and early national periods.
Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century, Cooke explains, the yeoman town of Newtown relied on native joiners whose work satisfied the expectations of their fellow townspeople. These traditionalists combined craftwork with farming and made relatively plain, conservative furniture. By contrast, the typical joiner in the neighboring gentry town of Woodbury was the immigrant innovator. Born and raised elsewhere in Connecticut and serving a diverse clientele, these craftsmen were free of the cultural constraints that affected their Newtown contemporaries. Relying almost entirely on furnituremaking for their livelihood, they were free to pay greater attention to stylistically sensitive features than to mere function.
About the author
Edward S. Cooke, Jr. is Charles F. Montgomery Associate Professor of American Decorative Arts at Yale University. He wrote the exhibition catalog for
New American Furniture: Second Generation Studio Furnituremakers, edited and contributed to
Upholstery in America and Europe from the 17th Century to World War I, and contributed to
Furniture by Wendell Castle, Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection, Conservation by Design, The Ideal Home 1900-1920 and
"The Art that is Life" The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920.
Summary
Relying almost entirely on furnituremaking for their livelihood, they were free to pay greater attention to stylistically sensitive features than to mere function.
