Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America
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Book Description
For devotees of American decorative arts, Wallace Nutting (1861-1941) needs little introduction. A Congregational minister turned author, photographer, and wildly successful entrepreneur, Nutting was the principal authority on early American furniture for much of the twentieth century and played an important role in the development of a colonial revival aesthetic and ideology. He collected, reproduced, and marketed colonial artifacts, and the goods and experiences he offered his middle-class customers promoted his idealized notion of a time and place that he called "Old America." This handsomely illustrated book is the first full-length study of Nutting's life and work. Thomas Andrew Denenberg describes Nutting's interrelated endeavors, from his varied writings (including Furniture of the Pilgrim Century and the monumental three-volume Furniture Treasury) to his photography (both amateur and professional), chain of restored museum houses, renowned collection of seventeenth-century furniture, reproduction colonial furniture business, and advertising program. By charting Nutting's activities, Denenberg creates a picture of an influential cultural critic who deftly combined myth and materialism, contributing significantly to both the growth of consumerism and the development of an antimodern worldview in the twentieth-century United States.
From the Publisher
This important and entertaining book is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and shown there from June 3 to October 19, 2003. Published in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America
Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America,Thomas Andrew Denenberg,Yale University Press,0300096836,1861-1941,20th century,Art,Artists, Architects, Photographers,Biography,Biography / Autobiography,Collectors and collecting,Furniture,General,History,Nutting, Wallace,,Photographers,United States,Biography & Autobiography / Artists, Architects, Photographers,Nutting, Wallace
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