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Briefly, "Colonial" is both a period in American history and a furniture style. As the noted writer of
woodworking manuals, John Gerald Shea says in the Preface to the 1964
edition of Colonial
Furniture Making for Everybodypage
v, much confusion
exists about the meaning of "Colonial".
"Colonial
furniture" is in itself a misnomer. For there are at least
three separate categories of colonial furniture, and two of these have
little in common.
First,
there is the rudimentary, solid-wood furniture which the original
settlers produced in this country during the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. Second, there are the ornate
and
sophisticated mahogany designs developed here during the
post-settlement era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These
two types of "colonial" have about as much affinity to each other as a
primitive peg-leg stool has to a polished Chippendale chair. Yet, they
are grouped together, willy-nilly, in books and catalogs and both are
called "colonial furniture."
In this book we are
dealing
primarily with the first category. (Some try to separate this by
calling it "early American." But this, too, is a misnomer. Because in
common usage, "early American" also embraces furniture of the
post-settlement periods.) So, to establish some distinction, text
reference is modified to read "early colonial." This signifies that the
basic furniture designs shown here were first made by the American
settlers during the early colonial period.
There
is, however, a third category
of colonial furniture presented in this book. We call this
"contemporary colonial." It includes the attractive new designs and
adaptations which are based on, and inspired by, the 'early colonial
style. Colonial furniture as it is produced and popularized in America
today is largely of this third category.
Sometimes
there is only
a remote relationship between these new designs of "contemporary
colonial" and the antiques which inspired their development.
Nevertheless, the honest appeal of solid-wood construction and details
of fine craftsmanship still prevail. The beautiful old scrolls and
authentic shapes of wood turning also have been retained to distinguish
today's colonial. Most modifications of the original designs have been
made with -reason and good taste. For as much as we may love this
traditional furniture style as it was originally made, antiques do not
meet all the needs of our homes of today.
Colonial
Revival: A restoration of interest in
the material culture of America's foundation era. (I am not going to engage myself in battles
associated with America's "culture wars". Instead, delicately, I will
try to tread carefully through the minefields and merely try try
describe and explain the "who, when, where, how, and why".) The
Winterthur Museum website claims that the Colonial Revival began in the
mid-19th century:
Thousands of Europeans were immigrating to the United States. Between
1800 and 1930 the foreign-born population of the United States more
than doubled; the immigrants brought their own speech, culture, and
politics. Americans whose ancestors had arrived earlier were often
fearful that their traditions would be swept away by the flood of
foreign ideas and practices (Taylor 14)
Source: Ideological Origins of Williamsburg http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG99/hall/AMSTUD.html from opd William B. Rhoads, "The Colonial Revival and the Americanization of Immigrants," in The Colonial Revival in America, ed by Alan Axelrod; New York: W. W. Norton, 1985:
Between 1880 and 1930 the foreign-born population of the United States more than doubled from 6.7 to 14.2 million, the immigrants bringing their own speech, culture, and politics. Americans whose ancestors had arrived earlier were often fearful that their traditions would be swept away by the flood of foreign ideas and practices. From the 1890s until strict limitations were imposed on further immigration in 1924, many native-born Americans reacted to the threatened destruction of the American way of life by actively engaging in Americanization, the instilling of traditional WASP "American" values in the minds of the foreign-born.
Most often Americanization simply took the form of English-language classes and instruction in American government and history. The great events of the nation's past might, it was felt, also be made more vivid if portrayed in murals within public buildings. Edwin Howland Blashfield, one of the best-known muralists of the early 1900s, testified that art in public buildings was "good ... for the uneducated Irishman, German, Swede, Italian, who may stroll into some new city hall in our … ?
Sources: U.S.
Bureau of the Census, Historical
Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970,
pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 117;
Edward George Hartmann,The
Movement to Americanize
the Immigrant(New
York: Columbia University Press,
1948); John Higham,Strangers
in the Land: Patterns
of American Nativism, 1860—1925 (New
York: Atheneum Publishers, 1969), pp. 234—63; William B.
Rhoads,The
Colonial Revival
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1977), chap. 28...; Jonathon Prown and
Katherine Hemple Prown, "The Quiet Canon: Tradition and Exclusion in
American Furniture Scholarship", American
Furniture 2002, pages 207-227.
More development needed, with these sources:
Williams, A.D. Spanish Colonial Furniture. Gibbs Smith, 1944.
Katz, Sali Barnett. Hispanic furniture: an American collection from the Southwest. Stamford, Conn.:
Architectural Book Pub. Co., 1986.
Taylor, Lonn, New Mexican furniture, 1600-1940 : the
origins, survival, and revival of furniture making in the Hispanic
Southwest. Lonn Taylor, Dessa Bokides ; photographs
by Mary Peck, additional photography by Jim Bones. Santa Fe, N.M.:
Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987.
Kingsley
H. Hammett. Early New Mexican Furniture: A
Handbook of Plans and Building Techniques. Santa
Fe, NM: Fleetwood, 1999. 96 pages.
Colonial Style: [much more needed here] Colonial furniture, designed in a style reminiscent of primitive English Tudor furniture, is very straight lined, with simple curves and angles. Because its simple lines present less difficulty to "newbie" woodworkers -- in this sense very similar to Shaker and Arts and Crafts (Mission) furniture design -- the Colonial style remains popular for woodworking projects.