Inventing Boston : design, production, and consumption /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Cooke, Edward S., Jr. (Edward Strong), 1954- author.
Imprint:New Haven ; London : Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, 2019.
Description:viii, 221 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 28 cm
Language:English
Subject:Decorative arts -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 17th century.
Decorative arts -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 18th century.
Material culture -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 17th century.
Material culture -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 18th century.
Furniture -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 17th century.
Furniture -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History -- 18th century.
Material culture.
Furniture.
Decorative arts.
Handel
Industrie
Kunsthandwerk
Boston (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
Massachusetts -- Boston.
Boston, Mass.
History.
Format: Print Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12310283
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Varying Form of Title:Inventing Boston : design, production, and consumption, 1680-1720
ISBN:9780300232110
030023211X
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 186-205) and index.
Summary:During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Boston was both a colonial capital and the third most important port in the British empire, trailing only London and Bristol. Boston was also an independent entity that pursued its own interests and articulated its own identity while selectively appropriating British culture and fashion. This revelatory book examines period dwellings, gravestones, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and silver, revealing through material culture how the inhabitants of Boston were colonial, provincial, metropolitan, and global, all at the same time. Edward S. Cooke, Jr.'s detailed account of materials and furnishing practices demonstrates that Bostonians actively filtered ideas and goods from a variety of sources, combined them with local materials and preferences, and constructed a distinct sense of local identity, a process of hybridization that, the author argues, exhibited a conscious desire to shape a culture as a means to resist a distant, dominant power.