BY MICHAEL W. HARTMAN
A 1789 Maryland inventory recorded seven enslaved people—Beck and her children Juliet, Biddy, and Henry; Mary and her daughter Appolonia; and a man called Dick—as the property of Benjamin and Eleanor Laming, the subjects of a double portrait by Charles Willson Peale.
BY MARGARET WOOD
Best known as an interior decorator and wallpaper historian, Nancy Vincent McClelland’s passion for wallpaper spanned decades. Throughout her nearly 60-year career, she studied, collected, produced, and used wallpapers in her practice.
BY JENA GILBERT-MERRILL
In 1909, a little-known artist and social reformer named Louise Brigham published Box Furniture: How to Make a Hundred Useful Articles for the Home, a collection of instructions for producing simple, modular furniture from repurposed wooden packing crates.
BY IRIS MOON
Luxury After the Terror explores the production, circulation, and survival of French luxury after the death of Louis XVI by focusing on decorative arts makers with strong ties to the monarchy and how they navigated the Terror and the world that it remade.
BY JESSIE DEAN
From its charming cover alone, this recent publication from Yale University Press caught our eye, but when multiple members recommended it, we knew The Story of the Country House: A History of Places & People by Clive Aslet was worthy of your attention.
REVIEW: SPECIAL PROGRAM
December 4, 2021
BY SUE A. KEILBAUGH
In 1901, William Lightfoot Price brought together a group of prosperous Philadelphia free thinkers who enjoyed debating current philosophies of reform with the more informal company of his partners, friends, and relatives whose interests lay primarily in aesthetic matters. The consequence was the start of Price’s experimental utopian community based on the Arts & Crafts Movement.
BY JULIE SIGLIN
The story begins with a magnificent cherry tree. Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), an artist often considered the father of the Studio Furniture movement, was recently married and searching for a home in which to start his family. While exploring properties for sale in the Paoli, PA, area with his realtor, the agent said, “I’ll show you a place that I think you’ll like.”
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