Windsor-Chair Making in America: From Craft Shop to Consumer

Drawing principally on original source materials, Nancy Goyne Evans's elegantly written and extensively illustrated Windsor-Chair Making in America presents an authoritative and absorbing historical picture of the vernacular chair shop and industry. Of the book's five chapters, three deal extensively with the craft shop. Evans discusses everything from structure to tools and equipment, from shop personnel to power sources, and from raw materials to ornament, both painted and stenciled. A chapter on marketing explores the booming Windsor-chair trade in the American coastal South and the islands of the Caribbean, furniture distribution to local, overland, and overseas markets, and general methods of doing business. Another section explores consumerism and the use of Windsor furniture in domestic and public settings.

Students and interpreters of American material culture and life will find here an abundance of new material organized and presented to provide comprehensive insights into craft life and product distribution in America. Evans's book should have pride of place in the libraries of collectors, curators, practicing and amateur furniture craftsmen, and anyone interested in early American studies trades, folk art, and pre-industrial technology.

This book includes an extensive index, detailed maps, an indispensable paint color chart based on more than 1,200 references, a select bibliography, and a wealth of photographic reproductions.

NANCY GOYNE EVANS is an independent furniture historian, lecturer, consultant, and former Winterthur Museum staff member. She has been awarded a George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award (Art Libraries Society of North America), the Charles F. Montgomery Prize (Decorative Arts Society), and a Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award (Association of College and Research Libraries of the American Library Association) for American Windsor Chairs (1996) and American Windsor Furniture: Specialized Forms (1997), which were both published in association with Winterthur.