Yesterday's Children: The Antiques and History of Childcare - Softcover

Kevill-Davies, Sally

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1851491848 ISBN 13: 9781851491841

Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Ltd, 1994

Synopsis

An entertaining history, ell illustrated, observed through the everyday objects found in the nursery, full of amazing and sometimes shocking anecdotes

About this title

From Library Journal

This social history of the last 400 years of British and American childbirth and childcare practices presents a strange and sometimes grim picture of what should have been a time of innocence. The author, formerly of Sotheby's auction house, is herself the product of a rigid and properly British upbringing--although we can only hope that she was not bound to a board and hung on a wall, as 18th-century babies were. Many of the household and medical utensils illustrated, taken from collections as diverse as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and numerous private collections, seem quaint or curious in the 1990s but were considered to be state of the art in centuries past. Because of the author's extensive coverage of nursery and playroom decoration, costumes, and christening and death rituals, this book would be invaluable to designers of theater sets and costumes. Antique collectors will appreciate the very good index. And all new parents and persons with vivid memories of their own childhood will be charmed by this account.
- Margarete Gross, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Ltd
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1851491848
• ISBN 13: 9781851491841
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 316