Book Reviews Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast. Organized and edited by Brock Jobe, with contributions by Diane Carlberg Ehrenpreis, James L. Garvin, Anne Rogers Haley, Brock Jobe, Myrna Kaye, Johanna McBrien, Kevin Nicholson, Richard C. Nylander, Elizabeth Redmond, Kevin Shupe, Robert Trent, Gerald W. R. Ward, and Philip Zea. Photographs by David Bohl. Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993. Distributed by University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire. 454 pp., 14 color and numerous bw illustrations, appendixes, bibliography, index. $65.00 (cloth), $39.95 (paper). In 1891 Irving W. Lyon published what is acknowledged as the first serious book-length study of American furniture, The Colonial Furniture of New England. One hundred two years later, Portsmouth Furniture offers impressive evidence of the inexhaustible richness of the field of early American furniture, as well as of the significant developments and refinements made to Lyon’s pioneering scholarship during the past century. Lyon made no references to Portsmouth in Colonial Furniture, and Portsmouth furniture has received little attention from scholars over the ensuing century. The foremost achievement of Portsmouth Furniture, therefore, is as the first book to be written on the subject. The Architectural Heritage of the Piscataqua (1937) by John Mead Howells, as well as James L. Garvin’s more recent publications on the public and domestic buildings of Portsmouth, have brought the town’s architecture to national attention; yet, other than research-in-progress published by Myrna Kaye and Brock Jobe and one or two short articles, the only existing survey of Portsmouth furniture has been Charles Buckley’s five-page article, “Fine Federal Furniture Attributed to Portsmouth,” in Antiques for February 1963. The exhibitions of New Hampshire decorative arts held by the Currier Gallery in 1964 and the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1973 included a few examples of Portsmouth furniture, but the New Hampshire Historical Society’s landmark exhibition and catalogue, Plain & Elegant, Rich & Common: Documented New Hampshire Furniture, 1750–1850 (1978), included nothing made in the Piscataqua region prior to 1802. Much of both the artifactual and documentary evidence presented in Portsmouth Furniture is, therefore, newly rescued from obscurity. Brock Jobe and his colleagues have researched every possible source for information: public and private records, genealogies, and local histories. Their search for objects has been particularly exhaustive, involving public and private collections, auction catalogues, and periodical and secondary literature. Most importantly, their study has been grounded in the firsthand examination of 1,500 pieces of furniture. The detailed information provided for the 117 examples in this book offers any student of the subject an extraordinary resource. Two appendices provide the names of more than 250 craftsmen in the furniture trades and the identities of 48 individuals or families who branded their furniture, a practice more common in federal-period Portsmouth than anywhere else in the United States. The subject has thus benefited from the delay: although it has taken the field a long time to focus on Portsmouth furniture, this particular treatment is an exemplary publication. The book’s large format allows David Bohl’s excellent photographs to be reproduced in large scale, and the high quality of the printing brings out every detail. The organization of Portsmouth Furniture was taken from Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye’s superb catalogue of the SPNEA collection, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (1984), with interpretive essays followed by a catalogue section of entries on 117 objects. These objects have been scrutinized not only by curators but also by conservators, who have contributed important information concerning condition and original finishes; one desk (cat. 31) retains its original beeswax coating. Much of this evidence, as well as the documentation provided for upholstered objects in this study, would have been ignored as recently as fifteen years ago. The three introductory essays are the heart of the book. James L. Garvin makes abundantly clear in his essay, “That Little World, Portsmouth,” that the Piscataqua region was one of the primary centers of eighteenth-century Atlantic shipping. The great fortunes and the concomitant political power realized by such mercantile families as the Wentworths, Moffatts, Langdons, and Wendells allowed them to construct homes that emulated English patterns and models. Brock Jobe’s essay, “Furniture Making in Eighteenth-Century Portsmouth,” begins with a survey of the working environment and of the wide variety of tasks expected of a furniture maker in this period. He follows with a discussion of the stylistic development of Portsmouth furniture, contrasting the idiosyncratic, localized interpretations of later baroque styles by John Gaines iii (1704–1743) and Joseph Davis (fl. 1726–1762) with the sophisticated work in the Georgian manner by English immigrant Robert Harrold (fl. 1765–1792). Harrold in particular represents this project’s most significant discovery, a man who, as a London-trained craftsman producing exceptional forms for a wealthy clientele, was one of the most important furniture makers in America during the later eighteenth century. Just as these men dominated local production during their respective careers, so Langley Boardman (1774–1833) and Samuel M. Dockum (1792–1872) dominated the furniture trade in the federal period, as Johanna McBrien demonstrates in her essay, “Portsmouth Furniture Making, 1798–1837.” Given an evident taste for Massachusetts-style objects and an increasing attempt to consolidate production into single large shops, the identity of Portsmouth furniture underwent a significant change during this period. As in the New England Furniture catalogue, the entries on individual objects in Portsmouth Furniture are grouped by form: case furniture, tables, seating furniture, beds, and looking glasses and picture frames. Each entry also follows an identical sequence to the earlier book, with a one- or two-page discussion of the object’s significance followed by notes on structure and condition, inscriptions, materials, dimensions, and provenance. This system is logical and easy to consult as a reference; however, I find the organization by form more suitable for a collection catalogue than for this regional study. Given the differences in makers, style, construction, and consumption between the colonial and federal periods, I would have preferred to see separate sections for the colonial and federal objects. Not only did this organization work well in the related exhibition, but it would have tied the entries more closely to the relevant essays by Jobe and McBrien. The entries are by nine different authors, with almost half of the total being written by Diane Carlberg Ehrenpreis (thirty two) and Brock Jobe (twenty one), not counting the seventeen entries they wrote jointly with others. The remaining seven authors were tapped to contribute in areas of special expertise, such as Philip Zea on clocks and early turned chairs, Robert Trent on seventeenth-century furniture and upholstered objects, and Richard C. Nylander on beds. The editors of this volume (Jobe, Nancy Curtis, and Gerald W. R. Ward) are to be commended for not only the uniformly high standard of the writing but also for preserving the authors’ individual voices. For example, Myrna Kaye’s entries on English-style chairs by Robert Harrold and his contemporaries in the 1760s and 1770s communicate the excitement and suspense that accompanied the identification of this important group of objects. The objects were chosen for the catalogue on the basis of three criteria: documentation to maker or owner, aesthetic quality, or “significance as a representative example of a common form” (p. 74). Not surprisingly, the last category represents the smallest number of objects, for only about a dozen—turned chairs and tables and board chests—represent relatively inexpensive furniture. In part this selection is a matter of survival, for the best documented objects tend to be the aesthetic successes and also tend to be the most costly furniture made for elites. Commonplace objects also receive less emphasis because, as Elizabeth Redmond notes with regard to a turned table (cat. 45), they are “ubiguitous and exhibit so little regional variation.” Portsmouth Furniture has as one of its principal agendas the reversal of “the century-long process of misattribution” as objects made elsewhere, primarily the North Shore Massachusetts (p. 36). Diagnostic style features and construction details are less likely to be present on simple, inexpensive objects. One such reattribution is a type of scrolled support for armchairs (such as cat. 88) long considered typical of Newburyport; it is now conclusively identified as a Portsmouth trait, apparently later imitated by Newburyport craftsmen. A secretary-and-bookcase (cat. 28) resembles documented Salem work but features idiosyncratic construction features of Langley Boardman. Both the armchair and the desk are beautiful objects, but neither of them was representative of the furniture owned by the majority of Portsmouth residents. The authors’ collective effort to create an identity for Portsmouth furniture raises the larger issue of how, one hundred years after Irving Lyon, one approaches or defines a “region.” In his essay “Regionalism in American Furniture Studies,” published in Perspectives on American Furniture (1988), Philip Zimmerman identified three chronologically successive types of regional studies: descriptive, comparative or evaluative, and analytical. As the first book on the subject, Portsmouth Furniture is of necessity largely descriptive, providing detailed evidence concerning objects, makers, and owners. With the understandable zeal of archaeologists uncovering buried treasure, most of the authors take an all-or-nothing approach in identifying objects as Portsmouth products. Only eight objects in the catalogue are described as “probably Portsmouth” or “Portsmouth area,” with one identified only as “coastal New Hampshire” (cat. 114). Of the objects described unequivocally as “Portsmouth,” however, a few seem less secure than the majority. A blockfront chest of drawers (cat. 7) “closely adheres to Boston precedents” but is attributed to Portsmouth because of some construction features that deviate from the respected Boston norm. Jobe also notes that these features have little in common with chests made in Portsmouth, and it is only the chest’s history of ownership in the Saltar and Wendell families that links it to the town. One could argue with equal validity that the idiosyncracies of its construction are the signature of a maverick Boston maker rather than the hallmark of a different center. A fancy dressing table (cat. 24) is presented as “the most outstanding piece of painted furniture from Portsmouth,” although the only substantive connection to the town is the object’s Wendell family ownership. The shape and turnings of this table appear in Boston and other areas of Massachusetts. None of the fancy chairs and settees (cats. 98–100) included in this study are definitely ascribed to Portsmouth, leaving little context in which to evaluate the table. As these examples indicate, the authors of the entries bring in comparative examples from other areas only as influences on Portsmouth styles or as examples of what Portsmouth styles are not. For instance, federal-period card tables made in Salem are described as models for Portsmouth craftsmen but supposedly feature more monochromatic veneers than those made in Portsmouth (p. 260). Aside from the fact that documented Salem card tables exist with veneers of equal contrast, there is no systematic comparison of Portsmouth furniture with contemporary work in Massachusetts or elsewhere as a means of defining how Portsmouth fits into the larger picture of American furniture. An analytical approach to the subject—answering the question of why specific styles were popular in Portsmouth—would require not only the foregoing comparative study but also a less chauvinistic view of Portsmouth furniture. In other words, as Philip Zimmerman frames the question, how is a “region” properly defined—by simple political boundaries, by geography, or by larger socioeconomic-cultural factors? In most instances the first choice seems to be the guiding definition for Portsmouth Furniture. A few examples of furniture made in outlying towns are included, but without any systematic observations concerning Portsmouth’s relationship to the rest of New Hampshire. Moreover, after looking at much of the material from the federal period, one wonders if, despite certain distinctive forms, Portsmouth really did belong to the larger coastal Massachusetts-to-Maine region that has obscured it for so long. A few of the federal-period objects presented as Portsmouth products (in particular, cats. 23, 29, 62) are so similar to Boston and North Shore examples that the attempt to isolate them as Portsmouth products seems almost beside the point. I raise these issues not to diminish in any way the splendid achievement realized in Portsmouth Furniture. In fact, it is only because Jobe and his colleagues have prepared such a detailed map of previously uncharted territory that anyone can begin to ask these questions. Synthetic conclusions have to build upon a rock-solid foundation of studies such as this one, grounded on a close examination of objects and documents. This book has filled a major gap in our understanding of New England’s artifactual history. For anyone wishing to do further research and analysis into this important topic, Portsmouth Furniture will be both their starting point and guide. David L. Barquist Yale University Arts Gallery . David L. Barquist. American Tables and Looking Glasses in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992. 423 pp. ; 30 color and numerous bw illustrations, line drawings, appendixes, bibliography, index. $65.00. David L. Barquist’s American Tables and Looking Glasses is the fourth catalogue in a series covering the American furniture collections at Yale University. Beautifully presented and intelligently written, it follows in the scholarly tradition of its predecessors: Edwin A. Battison and Patricia E. Kane’s The American Clock, 1725–1865: The Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1972); Patricia E. Kane’s 300 Years of American Seating Furniture: Chairs and Beds from the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1976); and Gerald W. R. Ward’s American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (1988). The comprehensive catalogue entries and excellent photography in American Tables and Looking Glasses constitute an invaluable reference, not only for the Yale collections, but for related objects in other institutions and private collections. The tables and looking glasses are arranged first by form, then by style and place of manufacture if, as in the case of neoclassical card tables, there are enough objects to warrant such divisions. Each entry specifies the period term of the object, maker (if known), place of origin, date of manufacture, materials, and dimensions, followed by detailed descriptions of the structure, condition, and provenance. Inscriptions, exhibition histories, and publication references are also given where appropriate. The accompanying photographs consist of overalls and details carefully chosen to illustrate important points in the text. For example, a rare southern baroque oval table with falling leaves (cat. 43)—popularly referred to as a William and Mary gate-leg table—is illustrated open in color and black and white, closed, and upside-down to show the unusual draw-leg support. Photographs of related objects in other collections and additional close-ups and color illustrations of construction details, carving, turning, and inlay would have improved the catalogue, but space, budgets, and price constraints are a factor in any publication. Engraved designs from British pattern books, prints, and paintings complement Barquist’s excellent analysis of European influences on American furniture, both in design and use. The entry for a classical New York card table (cat. 120) is especially noteworthy in identifying the probable design source as Nicholas de Launay or Claude Ballin’s illustration of two silver console tables made between 1670 and 1680 for the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. Such information is very helpful in placing American furniture in a more global context. The individual entries in American Tables and Looking Glasses are extremely well researched, with abundant references from primary sources—particularly from city directories, inventories, pattern and price books, letters, and newspaper advertisements—and published works. Not only do these entries record the physical properties of each object but they contain detailed discussions of related examples, structural and decorative options available to patrons (see cat. 108), and patterns of use. They also complement Barquist’s interpretive essays examining the social and cultural factors that influenced the development and evolution of each major table and looking-glass form. The chapter on looking glasses has a lengthy introduction with sections devoted to terminology and connoisseurship. Barquist’s analyses of the importation of European looking glasses (primarily British), the technological and economic factors that made it difficult for American tradesmen to compete with imports, the problem of relying solely on woods to determine nationality (because woods were exported to Britain and some related American and European species are indistinguishable microscopically), and the absence of identifiable American looking-glass styles caution professionals and novices against making hasty conclusions about place of origin. At Christie’s we have found that reliable attributions depend on wood analysis combined with a thorough understanding of structure, carving, and gilding techniques. Using this methodology, we were able to identify not only the city of origin (Philadelphia) but the carving shop (James Reynolds) that produced an important carved white rococo looking glass that sold at our gallery in January 1991. Catalogues like American Tables and Looking Glasses provide the source material that make such determinations possible. Although every section in the book is noteworthy, the essay titled “Pillar Looking Glasses” (pp. 323–25) is a fascinating history of design and one of the few areas where objects outside the Yale collections are illustrated. Barquist discusses the British neoclassical origins of this form, the importation and sale of pillar looking glasses in the colonies, and American regional variants. With reverse-painted glass panels, carved ornaments, and relatively generic architectural elements, pillar looking glasses were intended to complement other furnishings and architectural details. A Plan & Section of a Drawing Room from Thomas Sheraton’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1793)—one of the earliest depictions of a pillar looking glass—makes the point abundantly clear. In addition to Barquist’s excellent research, American Tables and Looking Glasses contains brilliant essays by Gerald W. R. Ward and Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett. Ward’s “The Intersections of Life: Tables and Their Social Role” takes up where his essay for Yale’s case furniture catalogue left off (see “Matter in Place: Some Thoughts on Case Furniture”). In “Intersections of Life,” Ward uses the evolution of the table (in terms of size, shape, materials, etc.) to explore broader historical, social, and cultural topics such as human behavior, philosophy, social and familial hierarchies, and perceptions of equality and status. Drawing on modern studies of proxemics—the manner by which people “establish territories, create privacy, avoid intrusions, and . . . regulate their interaction with others” (p. 18)—and research into changing attitudes toward dining, card playing, and social interaction from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, he demonstrates that furniture forms are intimately related to social relationships and attitudes about correctness. To use a simple example, rectangular table tops suggest formality and hierarchy, whereas round or oval ones have the opposite effect. Garrett’s introductory essay, “Looking Glasses in America, 1700–1850,” eloquently reveals how “the looking glass . . . bespeaks ritual and symbolic meaning as much as utility and household use, metaphor as much as mirror” (p. 27). Using information from inventories, diaries, housekeeping guides, and other period documents, Garrett shows how looking glasses evolved from pocket size to full length and how they became reflections of status, both personal and societal. She also ties the proliferation of looking glasses and the evolution of accompanying forms, such as dressing tables, dressing glasses, and commodes, with increased concerns for personal hygiene. Even the problems of caring for looking glasses—subjected as they were to the vagaries of climate, clumsy owners and servants, and neglect—are covered in this excellent essay. In recent years, museum catalogues have been criticized for being descriptive rather than interpretive and for being somewhat redundant; yet, they are essential references for academics, curators, auction professionals, dealers, and collectors. The objects illustrated and described in them are the building blocks for books and articles on individual tradesmen, shops, and regional groups; technology, industry, and connoisseurship; consumerism and patronage; and the social and cultural implications of material culture. With its thought-provoking essays, interpretive catalogue entries, and excellent photography, American Tables and Looking Glasses is a testimony to the importance of collection catalogues, both public and private. John Hays Christie’s . Philip Zea and Robert C. Cheney. Clock Making in New England, 1725–1825: An Interpretation of the Old Sturbridge Village Collection. Edited by Caroline F. Sloat. Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1992. 173 pp., numerous color and bw illus., line drawings, appendixes. $34.95. For cultural historians and others who study and interpret the decorative arts, clocks are exceptionally rich objects. Typically combining the skills of clockmakers, cabinetmakers, inlaymakers, brassfounders, silversmiths, engravers, and decorative painters, clocks are usually signed by their makers and often bear additional clues to their ownership, cost, distribution, and subsequent repairs. For curators and collectors faced with the same clues, clocks can be daunting objects, the genuine article being costly and rare and even the simple examples requiring a broad knowledge of different media (metal, wood, glass) and historical trades. As a result, the literature on American clocks over the past century has naturally divided along disciplinary lines of technology and art, lines that often fail to converge. Caught somewhere in between is a long tradition of pictorial survey begun by N. Hudson Moore (The Old Clock Book [New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1911]), maintained by Wallace Nutting (The Clock Book [Framingham: Old American Company, 1924]), and revived by William Distin and Robert Bishop (The American Clock: A Comprehensive Pictorial Survey, 1723–1900 [1976; reprint, New York: Bonanza Books, 1983]). In the past two decades, only a few books on American clocks have successfully combined two or more of these approaches, often with contributions by two or more authors. In the case of The American Clock, 1725–1865 (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), a catalogue of American clocks in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, Edwin A. Battison, Curator of Horology at the Smithsonian, supplied extensive technical notes for Patricia E. Kane’s entries. Published two years later, Two Hundred Years of American Clocks and Watches (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1975) by Chris H. Bailey is still the best overview of American clocks and clockmaking, a subject worthy of several volumes by now and one that may be better addressed by regional surveys such as the late Charles Parsons’s lifetime pursuit of New Hampshire clocks. The present volume by Philip Zea and Robert C. Cheney, Clockmaking in New England, 1725–1825: An Interpretation of the Old Sturbridge Village Collection, is a successful synthesis of both models. Ultimately, Zea and Cheney, like Bailey, have written much more than a collection catalogue or a regional checklist. Indeed, a checklist of clocks appears only at the end of the book as “Technical Data” (Appendix A), arranged by accession number and printed in minuscule type. (It is not clear whether the list includes all the clocks in the collection or just those under consideration for this book.) Technical notes on the movement, escapement, and strike train are a significant improvement over the first publication on the Sturbridge collection by Charles Avery issued in 1955. The usefulness of Clockmaking in New England as a reference book, however, is diminished by the regrettable omission of an index, alphabetical list of clockmakers, concordance, or any other means of locating these objects in the body of the text. Considering the early formation of the Wells collection, it also would have been instructive to know where these clocks had been published previously. It is even more regrettable that such a well-researched book lacks even a general bibliography. As stated in the introduction, the goals of the book are to interpret clocks “in their historical context” and to show how clocks are “part of the fabric of New England life” (p. 5). For this project, Philip Zea and Robert Cheney are the ideal collaborators. Zea has written eloquently about rural New England furniture and craftsmen in Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), and his earlier article on Jedidiah and Jabez Baldwin, published by the Dublin Seminar (1981), is an exemplary comparison of the lives and livelihoods of an urban and a rural New England clockmaker and their patrons. Cheney, a third-generation clockmaker who has served for years as a consultant to Old Sturbridge Village, knows the J. Cheney Wells collection intimately. Through training, experience, and his own research, he has a thorough knowledge of New England clocks and is eminently well qualified to discuss alterations, replacements, and forgeries in the final chapter titled “Spurious Timepieces: Alarming Signs and How to Recognize Them.” It is a tribute to the editor Caroline F. Sloat that the individual voices of the authors do not emerge separately. Organized into six chapters, the book begins with an overview titled “Clockmaking in Colonial New England.” Citing tall clocks by Gawen Brown of Boston and the Claggetts of Newport, Zea and Cheney discuss the transmission of British clockmaking traditions to coastal New England cities during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Later tall clocks with wooden movements by Jonas Fitch and John Bailey of Massachusetts and by the Cheneys of Connecticut speak for the adaptation of these traditions by inland craftsmen lacking access to imported raw materials. Despite the limitations of the Sturbridge collection, this essay makes thorough use of early-eighteenth-century newspapers, account books, manuscripts, and secondary sources as well as the clocks themselves to portray the environment in which the first American clocks were made and owned. Throughout the book, the authors maintain an effective balance between technological, aesthetic, and cultural concerns. Unlike more narrowly focused studies, this interpretation reflects the broad interests of Zea, a seasoned historian who draws insight from a number of sources ranging from Puritan sermons to urban workshop practices, rural blast furnaces, and merchants’ best parlors, which serve to supplement Cheney’s technical analysis of clocks. For many readers, the main appeal of Clock Making in New England will be its three central chapters that address the Willard phenomenon, the work of their many apprentices, and their impact on clockmaking in New England during the early national period. Since the publication in 1911 of A History of Simon Willard, Inventor and Clockmaker by his great-grandson, John Ware Willard, the name of Simon Willard has loomed larger than life and arguably out of proportion to his historical contribution. In the absence of shop records or account books, the authors have combined close scrutiny of every kind of clock made by the Willards with every known scrap of documentation to present a full account of “their developing business and scientific interests” (p. 29). In the process, some new information emerges, such as Benjamin Willard’s removal to York, Pennsylvania, during the Revolutionary War (pp. 31–32). The authors’ analysis of six tall clocks by Simon and Aaron in the collection leads to the reasonable conclusion that “opulent cases masked standardized production,” the bread and butter that allowed Simon Willard and his sons to pursue more experimental designs and scientific instruments. Though it is helpful to know that the cost of the average tall clock represented approximately half the annual salary of hired agricultural labor (p. 37), it is less obvious how these clocks could be “in the mainstream of urban clockmaking on both sides of the Atlantic” with cases based on recognizably old-fashioned, “mid-century London styles” (p. 38). As with bombé case furniture, it may be that some wealthy buyers preferred a more conservative, English expression of opulence. By comparison, the design of the patented timepiece (the so-called “banjo clock”) was completely original, and the authors’ discussion of various cost options in light of accounts kept by John Doggett and nearby ornamental painters gives an excellent sense of the extensive collaboration and subcontracting among Boston artisans in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The real value of chapter 2, “‘Elegant Faces and Mahogany Cases’: Clocks by the Willard Family,” is its frank reevaluation of famous designs (the thirty-hour timepiece, weight-driven shelf clocks, tall clocks, patented timepieces and alarm clocks, gallery clocks, and regulators) and the factors behind their development. The chapter that follows, “The Willard Legacy: Clocks by Their Apprentices,” addresses the impact of the Willards on clocks made by nearly a dozen of their apprentices, several of whom were related by marriage to each other and to the Willards. As Zea and Cheney demonstrate, the similarities among their work are more striking than the differences, and they help shed light on the business of clockmaking and its evolution by midcentury. One wonders how many superior mechanics like Gardner Parker of Westborough were overshadowed by the self-perpetuating success of their masters. Those like Elnathan Taber and William Cummens who remained in Roxbury continued to produce clocks that are nearly indistinguishable from the work of Simon and Aaron. Those who left the Boston area still found it difficult to compete against the Willards’ well-established reputation and far-flung apparatus for marketing and distribution. The last of the three main chapters, titled “As Neat as at Roxbury: Clock Making in Federal New England,” examines the careers of clockmakers who were not trained by the Willards and of the vast majority who worked in the Yankee hinterland. Although rural patrons sought elegant timepieces for the same reasons as their urban counterparts, rural artisans tended to work seasonally while marching “to agricultural rhythms” (p. 101). In a barter economy, clockmakers typically lacked the cash necessary to purchase cast metal and imported materials for fine clockmaking. This territory is familiar for Zea, and he does a superb job of discerning both innovation and compromise in a disparate group of clocks from Maine, New Hampshire, and central Massachusetts. Original research in primary documents produces occasional nuggets, such as Nichols Goddard of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who ordered steel and clock parts from Germany in 1789 (p. 107). For readers satiated by the “immutable” elegance of Roxbury-style clocks, several of the cases in this chapter display interesting abstractions of familiar ornament, such as the attenuated fretwork in the hoods of clocks by John Edwards and Alexander T. Willard of Ashby, Massachusetts. The final interpretive chapter, “A Clock for Every Home: Connecticut’s Clock Makers Show the Way,” inevitably shifts gears with the industrialized manufacture of clocks in Connecticut between 1800 and 1830. Admittedly not a primary collecting interest of J. Cheney Wells (p. 119), the shifts from craft to industry and from patron to consumer are important themes in the interpretation of Old Sturbridge Village as a museum. This period has been well covered elsewhere, particularly by Chris Bailey, and is better represented in other museum collections. Nevertheless, Zea and Cheney make good use of the extensive secondary literature as well as of contemporary letters and account books at the libraries of the American Clock and Watch Museum and the Connecticut Historical Society. The result is a very readable account of Silas Hoadley, Seth Thomas, Eli Terry, and others who gradually transformed the manufacture and ownership of clocks. Considering the decision to illustrate and discuss only clocks in the collection at Old Sturbridge Village (except for one lantern clock), the authors of this book are remarkably successful in their effort to provide an historical and cultural interpretation of clocks and clockmaking in New England. Where the collection is relatively weak (chapters 1 and 5), the narrative is bolstered by historical documents; where it is strong (chapters 2–4), the technical and historical portions are well balanced. In this context, one might normally regard a final “how to” chapter on identifying fakes and forgeries as a thinly veiled ploy to appeal to a wider audience. Thanks to Robert Cheney’s familiarity with the clocks at Sturbridge and the wisdom inherited from his father and grandfather, however, this chapter is a fascinating guide across the treacherous terrain of altered cases, dials, reverse-painted glass, patent timepieces (where the stakes are especially high), high-quality reproductions from the 1920s and 1930s, and “updated” antiques, “marriages,” and “improvements.” Although Cheney stops short of describing certain tricks of the trade (“It is not the author’s intent to create a ‘faker’s handbook’” [p. 142]), his essay based on the study collection at Sturbridge provides many useful lessons not available elsewhere. Throughout this book, Zea and Cheney manage to elucidate complicated objects without ever losing sight of the larger context of clockmaking in nineteenth-century New England. The clarity of the text and the logical juxtaposition of consistently clear photographs set this book apart from dozens of previous attempts to cover the same material. Thanks to the determination of J. Cheney Wells to amass a comprehensive collection of work by the Willards, their apprentices, and their competitors, the collection at Sturbridge is well qualified to serve as the basis for a study of New England clocks. Historians, curators, and collectors are all well served by this lucid interpretation. Thomas S. Michie Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design . Sheila Connor. New England Natives: A Celebration of People and Trees. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1994. xi + 274 pp.; 24 color and 194 bw illus., bibliography, index. $39.95. Three Windsor chairs, an Eli Terry tall-case clock, and a painted triangular white-pine hatbox are the only pieces of furniture illustrated in this beautiful book, yet New England Natives will be of great interest to readers of American Furniture.1 It is no less than an engaging narrative of the evolving relationship between New England’s people and New England’s trees from the last ice age in the Pleistocene Era to the chestnut blight and reforestation of the twentieth century. Although the book can serve as a guide to the appearance and characteristics of trees found in the area, Sheila Connor also weaves into her story the importance of trees to the many crafts and industries that have been dependent on the products of trees: for instance, tailoring, shoemaking, cranberry and blueberry harvesting, in addition to the more obvious ones of papermaking, gunsmithing, lumbering, clockmaking, chairmaking, cooperage, boatbuilding, and other types of woodworking in its various guises. Serious students of furniture will be familiar with much of the material presented here about various common types of furniture wood, but the overall breadth of the discussion of the material culture of wood will surely illuminate new corners of “This Wooden World” (to borrow the title of chapter 2) for nearly every reader.2 Whereas the book’s content will be valuable to furniture historians, its broad interpretive format may also serve as a model for curators and others charged with caring for furniture collections and interpreting them for the public. This book grew out of the desire to prepare a guidebook to the collections of living trees and shrubs on the grounds of the Arnold Arboretum, a 265-acre site in Boston, Massachusetts, operated by Harvard University since 1872. Rather than prepare a traditional guidebook that emphasizes description and taxonomic identification, the Arboretum staff decided “instead to capture the imaginations of our visitors by telling them something about the history of the plants and their interactions with people—stories of how people have sought out plants and used them for various economic, cultural, and esthetic purposes” (p. ix). In other words, they wanted to write a book that someone who isn’t a plant or tree nut (so to speak) might like to read, both for knowledge and for enjoyment. Thus the text discusses all of New England and a multitude of subjects, while using specific trees, shrubs, and landscape formations in the Arboretum as illustrations, both pictorial and literary, to illuminate the general discussion. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave its support to this project, and Sheila Connor, Horticultural Research Archivist at the Arboretum, has accomplished the goal admirably. Her text mixes the general with the specific, avoids oversimplification, and provides an overview that will instruct and entertain laymen without making scholars cringe. One wonders how many, if any, American furniture collections can boast an interpretive guidebook of such quality that has appeal beyond the inbred world of curators, collectors, and dealers. New England Natives proves that it can be done, although it seems ironic that the hefty price tag may prevent the book from reaching the general audience for whom it is designed. Detailed catalogues of collections and exhibitions will always be needed, whether in printed or electronic form, as the basic building blocks of research and the cutting edge of scholarship, but New England Natives reminds us that contextual, interpretive handbooks are a viable supplement. Gerald W. R. Ward Museum of Fine Arts, Boston