American Furniture with Related Decorative Arts, 1660-1830: The Milwaukee Art Museum and... by Brock W. Jobe, Thomas S. Michie, Gerald W. R. Ward and Jayne E. Stokes

The formation of this choice collection and the production of the ambitious catalog are testament to the Milwaukee Museum's strong community support. The handsome, scholarly tome presents furniture, silver, base metals, ceramics, glass, and needlework in the collection arranged by style period (17th century, William and Mary, Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Federal). Concise essays introduce each section, incorporate the latest research, and demonstrate the collection's particular strengths. A team of experts who examined the objects have presented descriptions ranging from the specific to the general (i.e., from individual construction techniques and repairs to the history of a form's use in American homes). Every object is represented by at least one photograph, for a total of 189 images, 25 in color. Appendixes cover the latest conservation and scientific identification techniques. Highly recommended for special and academic libraries with related collections.
-Kathleen Eagen Johnson, Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
I'll be upfront and admit I am one of the contributors to this catalog. That said, I believe that review readers are owed a counterbalance to the one submitted by "A Reader" in 2001, who does not seem to understand what a collection catalog is, or did not notice the subtitle of the book. This is not survey. It is a very carefully focused, in-depth examination of the best of the Milwaukee Art Museum's American furniture and related decorative arts collection. While the MAM collection is not encyclopedic, examples there are of excellent quality and highly representative of the best types of objects owned and used in colonial and early Federal America. In short, they are undeniably "museum quality." "A Reader" complains of a lack of visuals but by their own text admits that the average number of images to text is better than 1:2. Given the extraordinary detail in each catalog entry (there are 113 in total) this is a very strong ratio indeed. In addition, the images are extremely high quality and show both overall scope and details very clearly. Finally,the essays at the beginning of each period section (17th century, William and Mary etc.) are excellent and could be used as a textbook for teaching American furniture history where there truly is no such text anywhere else. In short, this is not a coffee table-type picture-book survey, it is much more useful!

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