Enfilade

New Book | In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral

Posted in books by Editor on November 24, 2023

Now available in paperback from Yale UP:

Margaret Willes, In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral: The Churchyard that Shaped London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0300249835 (hardcover), $35 / ISBN: 978-0300273380 (paperback), $17.

The extraordinary story of St. Paul’s Churchyard—the area of London that was a center of social and intellectual life for more than a millennium

St. Paul’s Cathedral stands at the heart of London, an enduring symbol of the city. Less well known is the neighborhood at its base that hummed with life for over a thousand years, becoming a theater for debate and protest, knowledge, and gossip. For the first time Margaret Willes tells the full story of the area. She explores the dramatic religious debates at Paul’s Cross, the bookshops where Shakespeare came in search of inspiration, and the theater where boy actors performed plays by leading dramatists. After the Great Fire of 1666, the Churchyard became the center of the English literary world, its bookshops nestling among establishments offering luxury goods. This remarkable community came to an abrupt end with the Blitz. First the soaring spire of Old St. Paul’s and then Wren’s splendid Baroque dome had dominated the area, but now the vibrant secular society that had lived in their shadow was no more.

Margaret Willes, formerly publisher at the National Trust, is author of several books, including The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Reading Matters, and The Gardens of the British Working Class. She lives in London.

New Book | The Notebook

Posted in books by Editor on November 23, 2023

From Profile Books:

Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (London: Profile Books, 2023), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-1788169325, £25.

Diaries, sketchbooks, common-places, notebooks, ledgers, and ships’ logs: how the blank book changed the way we think, and helped us change the world. The first history of the notebook, a simple invention that changed the way the world thinks.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think? In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine. On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers, and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world. In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive—and happier.

Roland Allen is a publisher and author who lives in Hove. He studied at Manchester University and works in book (and notebook) publishing. He has written about subjects as diverse as bicycles and bread, kept a diary for decades, and enjoys stationery a little too much.

New Book | Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe

Posted in books, journal articles by Editor on November 20, 2023

In October, Christopher Baker was announced as the incoming editor of The Burlington Magazine (replacing Michael Hall, who has held the position since 2017). Baker’s book on Liotard has just been published in the UK by Unicorn and will be available in the US market soon.

Christopher Baker, Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe (Lewes: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2023), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1911397595, £30 / $45.

Jean Etienne Liotard (1702–1789) was one of the most accomplished, idiosyncratic, and witty artists of eighteenth-century Europe. Born in Geneva, he pursued a remarkable career, travelling across the continent and the Near East, portraying a riveting cross-section of society. Liotard worked in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Constantinople, and Vienna and excelled as a specialist in the delicate art of pastel. He became renowned for the uncanny realism of his portraits as well as the beauty of his drawings, while also experimenting with watercolour, oil painting, printmaking, and enamels. In Britain he enjoyed notoriety because of his exotic persona, and received commissions from royalty, aristocrats, grand tourists, and celebrities. Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe plots the career and practice and reputation of an extraordinary artist who deserves to be better known. This new study throws light on the wider cultural environment he navigated, illuminating connected themes, including fashion history, orientalism, and the promotion and display of portraits in the public and private spheres of Enlightenment Europe.

Christopher Baker is an art historian, curator, and author; he has been a Director at the National Galleries of Scotland and worked at Christ Church, Oxford, and the National Gallery in London. Christopher has also held Visiting Fellowships at Yale University and the British School in Rome and organised numerous highly successful exhibitions, chiefly on 18th- and 19th-century British and European art and the history of collecting.

The Burlington Magazine, November 2023

Posted in books, catalogues, journal articles, reviews by Editor on November 19, 2023

Charles Wild, Kensington Palace: The King’s Gallery, 1816, watercolour with touches of bodycolour over etched outlines, 20 × 25 cm c
(Royal Collection Trust, 922158)

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The eighteenth century in the November issue of The Burlington, which focuses on sculpture:

The Burlington Magazine 165 (November 2023)

e d i t o r i a l

• History of Art after Brexit, p. 1171.
It is probably fair to say that the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020 as a consequence of the referendum of 2016 was not greeted with much enthusiasm by professional art historians. The subject as it has developed over the past century is by its very nature transnational in outlook.

Cover of the November issue of The Burlington Magazine (2023), which includes a photograph of a detail of Apollo (1724).a r t i c l e

• Jonathan Marsden, “George I’s Kensington Palace: The Sculptural Dimension,” pp. 1196–1205.
William Kent’s decoration of the new state rooms at Kensington Palace, London, for George I in 1722–27 has long been recognised as a pioneering exercise in neo-Palladianism. It was also an early example of the use of Classical sculpture in English interiors, a development in which Michael Rysbrack played a larger role than has formerly been recognised.

s h o r t e r  n o t i c e

• Nicola Ciarlo, “Domenico Guidi in Padula: A Rediscovered Annunciation,” pp. 1206–09.

r e v i e w s

• Adriano Aymonino, “Albanimania,” pp. 1214–19.
A series of recent publications has turned the spotlight on Cardinal Alessandro Albani—described by Winckelmann as ‘the greatest patron in the world’—his villa in Rome, and collection of Classical antiquities, which have become newly accessible to scholars and the public after decades of seclusion.

• Heather Hyde Minor, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Piranesi and the Modern Age (Nationalmuseum, Oslo / MIT Press, 2022), pp. 1239–41.

• Adam Bowett, Review of Ada De Wit, Grinling Gibbons and His Contemporaries (1650–1700): The Golden Age of Woodcarving in the Netherlands and Britain (Brepols, 2022), pp. 1247–49.

Archangel Gabriel, attributed by Nicola Ciarlo to Domenico Guidi, ca.1699–1701, marble, 94 × 81 × 39 cm, with socle (Padula: Charterhouse of S. Lorenzo).

• Marjorie Trusted, Review of Jan Zahle, Thorvaldsen: Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period, 3 volumes (Thorvaldsens Museum and Aarhus University Press, 2020), pp. 1249–50.

• Natacha Coquery, Review of Iris Moon, Luxury after the Terror (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), pp. 1254–56.

• Joshua Mardell, Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire, North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023), pp. 1256–57.

o b i t u a r y

• Paul Williamson, Obituary for Michael Kauffmann (1931–2023), pp. 1258–60.
Keeper of the Department of Prints & Drawings and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum and subsequently Director of the Courtauld Institute of of Art, Michael Kauffmann was a scholar with a remarkable breadth of interest, as well as a widely respected and sensitive administrator and manager.

s u p p l e m e n t

• “Recent Acquisitions (2007–2023) of European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,” pp. 1261–68.
Seventeen years have passed since the publication of the last supplement in this Magazine describing the recent sculpture acquisitions made by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A). The present supplement therefore highlights a selection of the most noteworthy works acquired in the intervening years.

Exhibition | The Regency in Paris, 1715–1723

Posted in books, catalogues, exhibitions by Editor on November 14, 2023

Pierre Denis Martin, View of Paris from the Quai de la Rapée toward la Salpêtrière, l’île Saint-Louis, and l’île de la Cité, 1716, oil on canvas, 170 × 315 cm (Paris: Louvre / Musee Carnavalet)

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Now on view at the Musée Carnavalet:

The Régence in Paris, 1715–1723: The Dawn of the Enlightenment
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, 20 October 2023 — 25 February 2024

Curated by Valérie Guillaume, with José de Los Llanos and Ulysse Jardat

The Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris presents an exhibition on the Regency, a forgotten period in history, marking the return of the King and of political, economic, and cultural life to Paris.

Louis XIV died in Versailles on 1 September 1715, leaving behind a nation in debt and a five-year-old child too young to rule, Louis XV, as his heir. On 2 September, the Duke Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the late King, took on the role of Regent of France. This exhibition takes place as part of the tricentennial commemoration of the Regent’s death.

In 1715, the court, the government, and all the administrations moved back to Paris, the second city in Europe, whose population then increased significantly. Thus, the city, and notably the Palais-Royal, the Regent’s residence, became the heart of all political life. A period of intense cultural effervescence ensued, giving rise to a world of philosophical, economic, and artistic innovations. Voltaire, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Law, and Watteau are some the most well-known figures of the time. With the invention of paper money and the bankruptcy of 1720, these years of economic and financial frenzy were interspersed with significant twists and turns. Under the Régence emerged a newfound freedom of criticism, which would become known as the spirit of the Enlightenment.

The exhibition’s thematic structure highlights the innovations of the period in order to illustrate the breadth of their historical significance. Over 200 works from public and private collections—paintings, sculptures, prints, items of decor, and pieces of furniture—help us explore this period of history, accounting for the mutations of society at a time when Paris was becoming the cultural capital of France in a permanent way.

Curators
• Valérie Guillaume, director of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
• José de Los Llanos, head curator, in charge of the Graphic Arts Department and the Maquettes Department
• Ulysse Jardat, curator, head of the Decor, Furniture, and Decorative Arts Department

La Régence à Paris (1715–1723): L’aube des Lumières (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2023), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605705, €39.

New Book | Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment

Posted in books by Editor on November 13, 2023

From Bloomsbury:

Stacey Sloboda, ed., Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment: A Cultural History (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1350408029, $120.

Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of interior design and interior spaces from 1700 to 1850. Considering the interior as material, social, and cultural artefact, this volume moves beyond conventional descriptive accounts of changing styles and interior design fashions, to explore in depth the effect on the interior of the materials, processes, aesthetic philosophies, and cultural attitudes of the age. From the Palace of Versailles to Virginia coffeehouses, and from chinoiserie bathhouses to the trading exchanges of the West Indies, the chapters in this book examine a wide range of themes including technological advancements, public spaces, gender and sexuality, and global movements in interior designs and decorations. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars, this volume provides the most authoritative and comprehensive survey of the history of interiors and interior architecture in the long eighteenth century.

Stacey Sloboda is Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

c o n t e n t s

Preface

Introduction: The Interior in the Age of Enlightenment — Stacey Sloboda
1  Beauty: Cultural Aesthetics in the Enlightenment Interior — Anne Nellis Richter
2  Technology: Cultural Transfer, Imitation, and Improvement of Materials and Surfaces of the Interior — Noémie Étienne
3  Designers, Professions, Trades: Conceiving and Making the Interior — Conor Lucey
4  Global Movements: Exoticism and Hybridity in the Globalized Interior — Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding
5  Private Spaces: Performing the Home — Mimi Hellman
6  Public Spaces: Staging Ritual and Shaping Identity — Laurel O. Peterson
7  Gender and Sexuality: The Desire of Decor — Michael Yonan
8  The Interior in the Arts: Literary and Visual Representations — Karen Lipsedge and Melinda McCurdy

Bibliography
Index

New Book | A Cultural History of the Home

Posted in books by Editor on November 12, 2023

The 6 volumes appeared in 2020; the stand-alone volume on the Enlightenment became available in 2022 (see below); another option will appear in 2024.

Amanda Flather (anthology editor), A Cultural History of the Home, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), ISBN: ‎ 978-1472584410, $610.

A Cultural History of the Home provides a comprehensive survey of the domestic space from ancient times to the present. Spanning 2800 years, the six volumes explore how different cultures and societies have established, developed and used the home. It reveals a great deal about how people have lived day-to-day in a range of regions and epochs by providing a historical focus on the location in which they will have spent much of their time: the domestic space.

1  Antiquity, 800 BCE–800 CE
2  Medieval Age, 800–1450
3  Renaissance, 1450–1648
4  Age of Enlightenment, 1648–1815
5  Age of Empire, 1815–1920
6  Modern Age, 1920–Present

Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
• The Meaning of the Home
• Family and Household
• The House
• Furniture and Furnishings
• Home and Work
• Gender and Home
• Hospitality and Home
• Religion and Home

This structure offers readers a broad overview of a period within each volume or the opportunity to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter across volumes.

Amanda Flather is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Essex. She is the author of Gender and Space in Early Modern England (2006).

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Clive Edwards, ed., A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1472584250, $110. The paperback edition will be available in 2024.

During the period of the Enlightenment, the word ‘home’ could refer to a specific and defined physical living space, the location of domestic life, and a concept related to ideas of roots, origins, and retreat. The transformations that the Enlightenment encouraged created the circumstances for the concept of home to change and develop in the following three ways. First to influence homemaking were the literary and cultural manifestations that included issues around attitudes to education, social order and disorder, sensibility, and sexuality. Secondly, were the roles of visual and material culture of the home that demonstrated themselves through print, portraiture, literature, objects and products, and dress and fashion. Thirdly, were the industrial and sociological aspects that included concepts of luxury, progress, trade and technology, consumption, domesticity, and the notions of public and private spaces within a home. The chapters in this volume therefore discuss and reflect upon issues relating to the home through a range of approaches. Enlightenment homes are examined in terms of signification and meaning; the persons who inhabited them; the physical buildings and their furniture and furnishings; the work undertaken within them; the differing roles of men and women; the nature of hospitality, and the important role of religion in the home. Taken together they give a valuable overview of the manners, customs, and operation of the Enlightenment home.

Clive Edwards is Emeritus Professor of Design History at Loughborough University. He is editor of The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2015) and author of Turning Houses into Homes: A History of the Retailing and Consumption of Domestic Furnishings (2017), The Twentieth Century Interiors Sourcebook (2013), Interior Design: A Critical Introduction (2010), How to Read Pattern: A Crash Course in Textile Design (2009), Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, Soft Furnishings and Floor Coverings (2007), British Furniture: 1600–2000 (2006), and Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades, and Techniques (2001).

c o n t e n t s

1  The Meaning of Home — Karen Lipsedge
2  Family and Household —Helen Metcalfe
3  The House — Stephen Hague
4  Furniture and Furnishings — Clive Edwards
5  Home and Work — Leonie Hannan
6  Gender and Home — Ruth Larsen
7  Hospitality and Home — Woodruff Smith
8  Religion and the Home — Matthew Neal

New Book | A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6

Posted in books by Editor on November 11, 2023

From Bloomsbury:

Christina Anderson (anthology editor), A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 1824 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1472577894, $550.

Furniture is an artifact, so what can it tell us about culture? What social, religious, political, and economic factors have shaped its form and functions? How does furniture demonstrate the transformations in private and public life across time and cultures?

In a 6-volume work spanning 4,500 years, 70 experts chart the changing cultural framework within which furniture was designed, produced, and used in Western Europe. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and, to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

1  Antiquity, 2500 BCE–500 CE
2  Middle Ages and Renaissance, 500–1500
3  Age of Exploration, 1500–1700
4  Age of Enlightenment, 1700–1800
5  Age of Empire and Industry, 1800–1900
6  Modern Age, 1900–Present

Chapters address: Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations. The total extent of the pack is approximately 1,824 pages. Each volume opens with a series preface, an introduction, and notes on contributors; each concludes with notes, bibliography, and an index.

A Cultural History of Furniture is part of the Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access.

Christina M. Anderson is Research Fellow, History Faculty and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

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Sylvain Cordier, Christina Anderson, and Laura Houliston, eds., Volume 4: A Cultural History of Furniture in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), ISBN: ‎9781472577856.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface

Introduction — M. B. Aldrich with Sylvain Cordier
1  Design and Motifs — Barbara Lasic
2  Makers, Making, and Materials — Yannick Chastang
3  Types and Uses — Mary-Eve Marchand
4  The Domestic Setting — Antonia Brodie
5  The Public Setting — Jeffrey Collins
6  Exhibition and Display — Frederic Dassas
7  Furniture and Architecture — Peter N. Lindfield
8  Visual Representations — Michael Decrossas and Sylvain Cordier
9  Verbal Representations — Tessa Murdoch

New Book | America’s Collection

Posted in books, on site by Editor on November 10, 2023

The entrance hall of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State; completed in 1979, the room includes a rococo ceiling taken in part from Philadelphia’s Powel House, now installed as a period room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Photograph by Durston Saylor). For more information on the book and the history of the reception rooms, see James Tarmy’s August 24th article for Bloomberg.

 

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From Rizzoli:

Virginia Hart, America’s Collection: The Art and Architecture of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State (New York: Rizzoli Electa, 2023), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0847873272, $100. With a foreword by John Kerry and contributions by Bri Brophy, Allan Greenberg, Mark Alan Hewitt, Stacy Schiff, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, Elliot Bostwick Davis, Deborah Dependahl Waters, David Rubenstein, Carolyn Vaughan, and Laaren Brown.

The first volume in more than 20 years tells a new and modern story of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms, one of the top collections of American fine and decorative arts in existence.

The art of United States diplomacy has been conducted over more than two centuries with figures from all over the world, in peacetime and in conflict. For the last six decades, these negotiations have taken place in the rarified environment of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State. Tucked inside the modern Truman Building in the center of Washington, D.C., lies this special suite of rooms transformed by four renowned architects—gems of classical architecture brimming with exceptional American art and artifacts that tell the story of the nation’s founding and represent the singular ideals of the American character.

Housing one of the finest collections in the world, along with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Winterthur, these rooms display more than 5,000 objects, including paintings by John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart; silver and porcelain owned by George Washington and other presidents; fine furniture; maps and documents; prints and drawings, not to mention the very desk the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War was signed on. With all-new photography and essays, this book captures the history of the rooms and explores more than 150 examples of the extraordinary American art that animates the exquisite spaces.

Virginia B. Hart is director and curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms and Bri Brophy is deputy chief curator. The Honorable John F. Kerry is U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, and former U.S. Secretary of State. Allan Greenberg is an architect and author. Mark Alan Hewitt is an architect and architectural historian. Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser is the Senior Curator for the 2026 Bicentennial at Frederic Chruch’s home Olana and Curator Emerita of American Paintings and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is the Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Elliot Bostwick Davis is Senior Editor, Harvard Social Impact Review, Arts and Culture and a former museum curator and director. Deborah Dependahl Waters is an independent decorative arts historian and part-time assistant professor at Parsons, New School University. David M. Rubenstein is a financier and philanthropist. Carolyn Vaughan is a writer and editor of art books and exhibition catalogues. Laaren Brown is a writer and editor for art and natural history topics. Durston Saylor is a photographer of contemporary interior design and architecture. Bruce M. White is a photographer of works of art and historic architecture. Sarah Gifford is an award-winning graphic designer.

New Book | Americana Insights, 2023

Posted in books by Editor on November 10, 2023

From Penn Press:

Robert Shaw, ed., Americana Insights, 2023 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 288 pages, ISBN: 979-8988533108, $65.

Book coverAmericana Insights 2023 presents the latest research and discoveries on traditional American folk art and material culture. Groundbreaking essays by leading scholars provide a wealth of new insights on a wide array of artistic traditions. Covering a broad geographic area—including New England, the mid-Atlantic, South, and mid-West—and spanning the colonial era to early twentieth century, these essays enhance our understanding of the diverse American experience. This is the only interdisciplinary publication devoted exclusively to traditional Americana and folk art.

Contributors cover a range of topics including portraiture, furniture, jewelry, textiles, and works on paper. In the first volume, authors share groundbreaking research on the use of hooked rugs in the colonial revival era; revisit the work of a famed Connecticut portrait painter known as the Beardsley Limner and his namesake sitters; Rufus Porter’s work as an artist and entrepreneur; a distinctive group of paint-decorated dressing tables from New Hampshire; delicate cutworks made by an incarcerated inmate in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary; painted tavern signs; jewelry in folk portraiture; New Jersey schoolmaster and calligrapher Thomas Earl; and signature quilts from the nineteenth century.

Contributors: Deborah M. Child, Pamela and Brian Ehrlich, Cynthia Fowler, Emelie Gevalt, Mark D. Mitchell, Eileen M. Smiles, Laura Fecych Sprague.

Robert Shaw is an independent curator and art historian who has written and lectured extensively on many aspects of American folk art. His many critically acclaimed books include Bird Decoys of North America: Nature History and Art (2010), American Quilts: The Democratic Art (2017), and American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds (2021). He has curated exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Shelburne Museum, where he served as curator from 1981 to 1994.

Americana Insights is a nonprofit publication dedicated to the study of Americana and American folk art. It was founded in 2021 by Jane Katcher in collaboration with David A. Schorsch, her longtime friend and mentor in the field, founding editor Robert Shaw, and a distinguished advisory board of museum professionals and scholars. In 2023, curator and scholar Lisa Minardi was appointed editor of Americana Insights. More information is available here»