American Furniture, 1620 to the Present

From Inside Cover: "Meant for both connoisseur and amateur, serious collector and people simply interested in the subject, 'American Furniture' is the definitive book in its field, one of the great examples of scholarship and book design of the past decades. During the ten years of research and writing this book has required, the authors have examined furniture from coast to coast, in museums and private collections. Naturally, there is extensive coverage of the masterpieces of every era, form the seventeenth century to the present, many of them newly photographed for this book. But 'American Furniture' is by no means restricted to these pieces, nor is it merely a catalog or collection of pictures of tables and chairs. 'American Furniture' has a running text along with its identification captions, which places furniture in its social and historical context. This is the only book to encompass furniture 'away from the mainstream' -- pieces made away from the furniture centers of New York, New England, and Pennsylvania. Thus, there is discussion of the furniture of the Southwest; furniture made in Dutch, Spanish, French, and Norwegian settlements, furniture made in religious enclaves or as part of social or aesthetic reform movements; furniture that, new today, will become classic tomorrow. Exquisite line drawings reveal how antique furniture was made -- and therefore how to tell a genuine antique from a forgery. In both its 100 color pictures and its 1300 black-and-white photos, the book frequently presents furniture in the rooms they were made for -- one sees how the individual pieces forms part of a harmonious whole. 'American Furniture' is a source book, a record of American history, a treasury of inspiration for lovers of the decorative arts. It is itself, like so many of the pieces of furniture it discusses and portrays, a masterpiece."