Books : American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts, 1660-1830: The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Layton Art Collection
In association with Amazon.com
Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 749.21307477595
EAN num: 9781555950682
ISBN number: 155595068X
Label: Hudson Hills Press
Manufacturer: Hudson Hills Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 316
Printing Date: April 15, 1992
Publishing house: Hudson Hills Press
Sale Popularity Level: 2083892
Studio: Hudson Hills Press
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Beautiful and scholarly study. A must for collectors!
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
I'll be upfront and admit I am one of the contributors to this catalog. That said, I believe that review readers are owed a counterbalance to the one submitted by "A Reader" in 2001, who does not seem to understand what a collection catalog is, or did not notice the subtitle of the book. This is not survey. It is a very carefully focused, in-depth examination of the best of the Milwaukee Art Museum's American furniture and related decorative arts collection. While the MAM collection is not encyclopedic, examples there are of excellent quality and highly representative of the best types of objects owned and used in colonial and early Federal America. In short, they are undeniably "museum quality." "A Reader" complains of a lack of visuals but by their own text admits that the average number of images to text is better than 1:2. Given the extraordinary detail in each catalog entry (there are 113 in total) this is a very strong ratio indeed. In addition, the images are extremely high quality and show both overall scope and details very clearly. Finally,the essays at the beginning of each period section (17th century, William and Mary etc.) are excellent and could be used as a textbook for teaching American furniture history where there truly is no such text anywhere else.
In short, this is not a coffee table-type picture-book survey, it is much more useful!
Rated by buyers 
-
I purchased this book believing it was a pictoral history of fine American furniture. Instead, I found very few examples of period furniture(especially for an art museum). The book contained over 300 pages but only about 170 photos; less than 20 in full color. I expected to get the experience of walking through a museum of fine furniture and seeing the pieces in FULL COLOR! This book is far from that. The authurs only showed a small number of examples of furniture and furnishings from each period(William and Mary, Queen Anne, American Chippendale, Federal style); not nearly enough to give you a sense of the many beautiful pieces made during these periods. I felt the book tried to cover too much material without giving you a visual understanding of the many different styles. If there is any good to be said about this book it is that it was very professionally written, with a wealth of information given for the pieces that were shown. There are some interesting sections on identification of fibre used in furniture and the ethafoam treatment of a Boston easy chair.
In summary, if you thought this was a pictoral book full of beautiful, museum quality, American antiques... save your money. It's not worth the $85.00.
Find other books like this one:
