This course examines American decorative arts and interiors as the material culture of this country from the time of the earliest permanent European settlement until the middle of the nineteenth century. We will study the ways that objects such as furniture and household goods, which combine both useful and aesthetic principles, reflected the continued influence of European precedents and expressed the American experience of a changed society, economy and landscape.

Visual literacy is critical to this endeavor. First, we will build a vocabulary that will enable looking at and describing decorative arts as part of material culture analysis. We will discuss ways of distinguishing style, material, design, and function of various kinds of objects that help us identify, describe and interpret a particular object in relation to other examples of its time and period. Second, we will move outward from objects to look at decorative arts within their broader social, historical, and cultural contexts. Throughout the course, we will ask how artifacts from different periods of time can tell us about different aspects of the lives of all kinds of people in the past.

Objects not only reflect the ideas of those who made and used them; they also shaped the culture of which they were a part. Part of this “object-driven” kind of analysis involves examining works of art/artifacts in the context of design, production, and consumption. This leads us to look at how different classes of artifacts in different periods of time functioned, not only from a utilitarian standpoint but also aesthetically and symbolically within different kinds of environments. If we can only begin to examine the complex interaction between objects and behavior in this course, students will be exposed to different ways of interpreting “stuff of everyday life” within broader socio-historical contexts. As I like to say, after you take this class, the world around you will never be the same.