During the first four decades of the last century, America was mesmerized by the classical world. And never before has a book so thoroughly examined the period's diversity of thought and material production to demonstrate the variety of ways that nineteenth-century Americans used, misused, and even abused the lessons of antiquity in the arts and decorative arts.To an extraordinary extent, Americans embraced classicism at the beginning of the nineteenth century both as a fashionable new international style, which had its European beginnings in the eighteenth-century excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and as a distinctive expression of America's own emulation of classical precedents in government, ideal beauty, education, and the decorative arts.This book charmingly investigates the multifaceted impact of classical political, intellectual, and aesthetic values on early nineteenth-century American culture through a close examination of approximately 225 representative objects from this aesthetically brilliant period, including paintings, sculpture, furniture, silver, glass, ceramics, textiles, and printed materials. Focusing particularly on the type of objects with which Americans decorated and furnished their homes, this book examines not only the superbly designed and fashioned products made for the well-to-do, but also those objects that were mass-produced and more widely sought by a burgeoning middle class. From elegant Grecian couches with Roman paw feet, to diminutive pressed glass salts ornamented with classical chariots and cornucopia, few aspects of American material life escaped the classical craze.The text of this fascinating volume delves into the symbolic and material significance of classicism in American life, the adaptation antique forms and motifs by American craftsmen and consumers, and the vernacularization of classicism. The material production of this lavish and visually exciting period provides an illuminating look at the lives and homes of a wide range of Americans in the early days of our republic.
