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Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1980. 226 illustrations. xiii + 399pp. of text. 9 x 11.25. Cloth, with dust jacket. ISBN 0-684-16293-8.
.This lavishly illustrated and definitive book is invaluable to collectors of antiques, restorationists, museum curators, and anyone interested in American history.
Using the mass of research that has been done in the last fifty years, the authors bring together in one book the contents and arrangements of American rooms from the seventeenth century to World War I. Furniture, floor coverings, wall treatments, ceiling and architectural details, lighting, decorative arts, textiles, color, and accessories from each period are presented, as is the economics of furnishing an interior.
The authors researched pattern books, household guides, diaries, letters, estate inventories, period advertisements, and surviving artifacts to provide solid documentation — from the strong British influence of the Queen Anne and Chippendale periods to the evolving American look of twentieth-century simplicity.
The beautiful illustrations and thoroughly researched writing make American interiors from the past come alive in detail never before presented in one book.
Edgar de Noailles Mayhew is director of the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, Connecticut, and is Professor of Art History at Connecticut College.
Minor Myers, Jr., is chairman of the Department of Government and teaches the history of political philosophy at Connecticut College.
Drs. Mayhew and Myers previously collaborated on New London County Furniture, 1640 to 1840.
(The above commentary is provided by Charles Scribner's Sons.)
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