Enfilade

From Routledge:

Angela Scattolin Morecroft, The Enlightenment Rediscovery of Egyptology: Vitaliano Donati’s Egyptian Expedition, 1759–62 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 216 pages, ISBN: 978  140944  7771, $150.

In 1759 the botanist and scientist Vitaliano Donati led an expedition to Egypt under the patronage of King Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia, to acquire Egyptian antiquities for the Museum in Turin. Charting his tumultuous expedition, this book reveals how, in spite of his untimely death in 1762, Donati managed to send enough items back to Turin to lay the foundations for one of the earliest and largest systematic collections of Egyptology in Europe and help to bring the world of ancient Egypt into the consciousness of Enlightenment scholarship. Whilst the importance of this collection has long been recognised, its exact contents have been remained largely unknown. War, the Napoleonic occupation of Italy and the amalgamation and reorganisation of museum collections resulted in a dispersal of objects and loss of provenance. As a result it had been supposed that the actual contents of Donati’s collection could not be known. However, the discovery by Angela Morecroft in 2004 of Donati’s packing list reveals the exact quantity and type of objects that he acquired, offering the possibility to cross-reference his descriptions with unidentified artifacts at the Museum. By examining Donati’s expedition to Egypt and seeking to identify the objects he sent back to Turin, this book provides a fascinating insight into early collecting practice and the lasting historical impact of these items. As such it will prove a valuable resource for all those with an interest in the history of museums and collecting, as well as enlightenment travels to Egypt.

Angela Scattolin Morecroft holds an MA in Egyptian Archaeology from University College London and an MPhil and PhD in Egyptology from Cambridge University. Her discovery of Donati’s packing list was announced in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology in 2006.

C O N T E N T S

1  Introduction
2  Vitaliano Donati
3  Donati’s Egyptian Journey
4  Loss of the Collection and the ‘Quinternetto’
5  The Written Evidence from the Turin Egyptian Museum
6  The New Primary Source: Donati’s List
7  The Statues in Donati’s Collection
8  Investigation and Identification of the Oil Lamps
9  Statuettes and Other Small Objects
10  Conclusion

A revised and translated edition of Viktoria von Hoffmann’s Goûter le monde: une histoire culturelle du goût à l’époque moderne (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2013), published by the University of Illinois Press:

Viktoria von Hoffmann, From Gluttony to Enlightenment: The World of Taste in Early Modern Europe (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 282 pages, ISBN: 978 02520 40641 (cloth), $95 / ISBN: 978 02520 82146 (paper), $28.

Scorned since antiquity as low and animal, the sense of taste is celebrated today as an ally of joy, a source of adventure, and an arena for pursuing sophistication. The French exalted taste as an entrée to ecstasy, and revolutionized their cuisine and language to express this new way of engaging with the world. Viktoria von Hoffmann explores four kinds of early modern texts—culinary, medical, religious, and philosophical—to follow taste’s ascent from the sinful to the beautiful. Combining food studies and sensory history, she takes readers on an odyssey that redefined a fundamental human experience. Scholars and cooks rediscovered a vast array of ways to prepare and present foods. Far-sailing fleets returned to Europe bursting with new vegetables, exotic fruits, and pungent spices. Hosts refined notions of hospitality in the home while philosophers pondered the body and its perceptions. As von Hoffmann shows, these labors produced a sea change in perception and thought, one that moved taste from the base realm of the tongue to the ethereal heights of aesthetics.

Viktoria von Hoffmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège.

From The University of Virginia Press:

Camille Wells, Material Witnesses: Domestic Architecture and Plantation Landscapes in Early Virginia (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2018), 416 pages, ISBN: 978 08139 40366 (hardcover), $75 / ISBN: 978 08139 40373 (paperback), $40.

The Chesapeake region of eastern Virginia and Maryland offers a wealth of evidence for readers and researchers who want to discover what life was like in early America. In this eagerly anticipated volume, Camille Wells, one of the foremost experts on eighteenth-century Virginia architecture, gathers the discoveries unearthed during a career spent studying the buildings and plantations across this geographic area. Drawing on the skills and insights of archaeologists and architectural historians to uncover and make sense of layers of construction and reconstruction, as well as material evidence and records ranging from ceramics, furniture, and textiles to estate inventories and newspaper advertisements, Wells poses meaningful questions about the past and proposes new ways to understand the origins of American society.

The research gathered in this cohesive and engaging collection views the wider history of the colonial and early national periods through the lens of lauded as well as previously unrecorded sites in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions. The subjects are equally wide-ranging, from the way domestic architecture articulates problems and possibilities that found forceful expression in the Revolution; to the values and choices made by those who lived in unprepossessing circumstances as well as those who built statement gentry houses intended to dominate the landscape. Other essays address the challenges of discovering historically accurate room functions and furnishings as well as the way Colonial Revival attitudes still dominate much of what is imagined about the early Virginia past. Taken together, these beautifully written and accessible essays will be essential reading for those interested in architecture, material culture, and the ways they reveal the complexities of the nation’s history.

Camille Wells was most recently a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

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From Rowman and Littlefield:

Oscar Fitzgerald, American Furniture, 1650 to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017), 630 pages, ISBN: 978 144227 0381, $130 / £85.

Drawing on the latest scholarship, this comprehensive, lavishly illustrated survey tells the story of the evolution of American furniture from the 17th century to the present. Not viewed in isolation, furniture is placed in its broader cultural, historic, and aesthetic context. The focus is not only on the urban masterpieces of 18th-century William and Mary, Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Federal styles but also on the work of numerous rural cabinetmakers. Special chapters explore Windsor chairs, Shaker, and Pennsylvania German furniture which do not follow the mainstream style progression. Picturesque and anti-classical explain Victorian furniture including Rococo, Renaissance, and Eastlake. Mission and Arts and Crafts furniture introduce the 20th century. Another chapter identifies the eclectic revivals such as Early American that dominated the mass market throughout much of the 20th century. After World War II American designers created many of the Mid-Century Modern icons that are much sought after by collectors today. The rise of studio furniture and furniture as art which include some of the most creative and imaginative furniture produced in the 20th and 21st centuries caps the review of four centuries of American furniture. A final chapter advises on how to evaluate the authenticity of both traditional and modern furniture and how to preserve it for posterity. With over 800 photos including 24 pages of color, this fully illustrated text is the authoritative reference work.

Oscar P. Fitzgerald is a nationally known historian, author, lecturer, and consultant on American furniture from colonial times to the present. He retired as the director of the Navy Museum in Washington, DC and curator of Tingey House, to pursue full time his first love which is the history of furniture from antique to modern. As a member of the faculty of the Smithsonian Institution/George Washington University Master’s program in Decorative Arts & Design History, he teaches all the furniture classes. As a decorative arts consultant, he advises on the furniture collections of a number of historic houses including the Frederick Douglass House, the Clara Barton National Historic Site, and the Custis-Lee Mansion. His publication range from a study of The Green Family of Cabinetmakers: An Alexandria Institution (of the Mercy Street TV series fame) to the catalog of the studio furniture at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

C O N T E N T S

1  The Jacobean Period: Joiners and Cabinetmakers in the New World
2  William and Mary: The Years of Transition
3  Queen Anne: The Line of Beauty
4  The Chippendale Style
5  Furniture of the Federal Period
6  American Empire
7  Windsor Chairs
8  Country Furniture: New England
9  Southern Furniture
10  Furniture of Rural Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Mid-West
11  Shaker Furniture: The Gift to Be Simple
12  Victorian Furniture: Gothic and Rococo Revivals
13  Victorian Furniture: The Renaissance Revival
14  Eastlake, the Aesthetic Movement, and the Colonial Revival
15  American Mission Furniture and the Arts & Crafts Movement: 1900–1915
16  Traditional Revivals for a Conservative Public
17  Modern Furniture, 1920–1941: Is It Here to Stay?
18  America Takes the Lead: Mid-Century Modern, 1950s and 1960s
19  Post-Modern and Avant-Garde Furniture since 1975
20  Studio Furniture and Furniture as Art
21  Connoisseurship of American Furniture