Furnishing the Eighteenth Century provides an illuminating, interdisciplinary look into European and American furniture during the century that connoisseurs and collectors consider its golden age. Lavishly illustrated, this lively collection of essays by historians, art historians, and literary scholars examines the ways furniture of this period reflects the global contacts and social rituals developed in eighteenth-century Europe and America. Drawing on literature, painting, account books and death inventories, this diverse compilation explores how and why eighteenth-century men and women on both sides of the Atlantic purchased and used furniture. Ultimately, these essays make the past come alive, showing us what made desks, tables and chairs deeply meaningful in their own time and historically informative today.

Contributors: Donna Bohanan, Natacha Coquery, Madeleine Dobie, Dena Goodman, Mimi Hellman, David Jaffee, Ann Smart Martin, Kathryn Norberg, Chaela Pastore, David Porter, Mary Salzman, Carolyn Sargentson

Reviews

"The twelve essays that constitute this collection provide ample new, thoughtful, and frequently surprising revelations about what eighteenth-century furniture said to a broad range of makers, users, and audiences." – Enfilade, newsletter for Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture

"There have been few attempts to make the history of furniture above all a form of cultural and social history … all of these essays add to our stock of knowledge about furniture's importance." – H-France review

"This book contains meticulous archival scholarship in abundance, attention to detail in a series of wonderful close observations, but most of all, in individual essays and as a project as a whole, a wonderful panorama of the imaginative routes taken by recent scholarship on the decorative arts. At many points I was both inspired by the imaginative range and humbled by the work rate of cultural historians of the decoratugh to shame us complacent historians of the two-dimensional image. The answer to the skeptic’s question, 'Can the settee speak?' is, on the basis of the work presented in this volume, a resounding yes." – Mark Ledbury, Eighteenth-Century Life

"The book would make a really interesting addition to any design-related library, especially for a reader who appreciates in-depth essays." – Style Court blog: www.stylecourt.blogspot.com

Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Dena Goodman and Kathryn Norberg

Part 1: Mapping Meaning Globally

1. Orientalism, Colonialism, and Furniture in Eighteenth-Century France

Madeleine Dobie, Columbia University

2. Luxury Markets in Saint Domingue: Mahogany as a Case Study

Chaela Pastore, California State University, San Marcos

3. "A Wanton Chase in a Foreign Place": Hogarth and the Gendering of Exoticism in the Eighteenth-Century Interior

D...