An innovative social and cultural history of the British roots of Federal style furniture in Boston.

Isaac Vose was well known in his day among style-conscious Bostonians, his name synonymous with furniture of the highest quality and advanced design. His shop, the "first on Boston Neck," was in a prominent location and served as a familiar landmark in his South End neighborhood. Throughout the 1820s, 1830s, and as late as 1843, some nineteen years after Vose's death, auction advertisements explicitly cited his name as the maker of select furniture, with the association connoting quality and calculated to increase its sale price. This book gathers in one volume the known works of Vose as well as those attributed to him, and it is gorgeously illustrated throughout. The authors hope that Isaac Vose's work will gain recognition for its outstanding contributions to an American vision of classicism, albeit in Boston's more conservative, less "dashy" style.

A full-color catalog and in-depth examination of the distinctive furniture made by pro-British carpenter and joiner John Shearer, one of the most accomplished furniture makers of the post-Revolutionary period. This publication is co-sponsored by the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem, the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley.

While demonstrating the high level of artistry attained by furniture-makers of the period, this selection in many ways reflects the evolving character of domestic life in America during a seminal period in the country's history.

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

For centuries Boston has been one of the most important furniture-making centers in America. Soon after the town’s founding in 1630, Boston’s joiners and turners were the first craftsmen to make furniture in British North America, and the city’s cabinetmakers contributed to the art and craft of furniture making throughout the elegant colonial and federal periods. Its factories and designers have also been a source of fine furniture, creating major pieces in the various revival styles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Cabinetmaker and the Carver showcases rare and exemplary pieces from private collections, illustrating three centuries of Boston history through carefully selected examples of furniture that represent the trajectory of this great tradition.