American Material Culture, 17761876

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American Material Culture, 1776-1876
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Advantages of material culture studies

• Objects embody and reflect cultural beliefs
• A first-hand encounter with the past
• More representative
• More truthful

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Anasazi (AZ, c.700-1200)
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• James Pikes powderhorn, c. 1775

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Disadvantages

• Problems of interpretation understanding
• Cultural expression not limited to things
• Imposition of false narratives (gravestones)
• What survives? How typical? What gets discarded,
  what gets kept used? Role of changing fashion?
• Problems of dating

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Sources

• architecture, home design, interior spaces urban
  neighborhoods, streetscapes and design parks
  monuments
• household furnishings and implements
• clothing personal embellishment textiles
• art other visual sources
• tools toys musical instruments mortuary and
  sacred objects
• Posture, movement and gesture

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Method

• Examine object
• establish context and author(s) where possible
• Documents, statistics, oral data
• Analyze and speculate as to meaning

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Changing American Material Culture 19th c.
context

• Democratization of politics ethos of equality
  despite growing economic inequality
• Market Revolution transportation, mass
  productioncheaper, available goods
• Industrialization shifted locus of work from
  home to factory or office
• Urbanization, immigration, explosive growth
• Spatial separation of manual and non-manual
  laborers
• Issues of identity in a fluid democratic society
• Second Great Awakening and rise of evangelicalism

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Virginia c. 1650
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Virginia c. 1700
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Monticello (late 18th-early19thc)
Jefferson- natural law
Monticello-2
Monticello-3
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Monticello-1
Jefferson- natural law
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Monticello-1
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Massachusetts c. 1640-85
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R.I. c. 1780
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The Refinement of America

• Emergence of the middle class
• Gentility becomes a middle class value
• The genteel home
• New standards of hygiene
• Elimination of work areas within home
• multiple rooms for specific functions
• Beautified, painted exterior, enclosed yard,
  landscaping
• Genteel furnishings chairs, tables, rugs,
  pianos, daguerreotypes, books

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Curtis mansion, Mt. Vernon OH
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• Bowery bhoys

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Quilting Frolic, Phila.,1813
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The genteel parlor

• Purpose inculcating genteel values in family,
  expressing them to others
• New authority for middle-class women within home
  (Catharine Beecher)--but declining economic
  importance

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Models for the masses

• Photography studios Matthew Brady
• Builders pattern books
• Steamboats, railroad cars, department stores
• 19th c. chick lit of Lydia Maria Child,
  Catherine Sedgwick, et. al

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I.M. Singer Factory Showroom, 1852
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Contradictions

• Relationship with democracy did refinement blur
  or harden class and racial lines?
• Lydia Maria Child Only manners separated the
  classes
• Was refinement--and consumption--compatible with
  Christian morality? With democracy? With
  masculinity?
• Could poor whites and blacks aspire to gentility?
  Achieve it? Consume it?

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c. 1909 Pittsburg Slavic Immigrants