Jules David Prown

is Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Yale University and the author of John Singleton Copley and American Painting from Its Beginning to the Armory Show. He has taught at Yale for almost forty years, and receiv...

Kenneth Haltman

American Artifacts
Essays in Material Culture

 Edited by

Jules David Prown

Kenneth Haltman

Winner of the 2000 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book Award

In the distinguished, now decades-long history of Material Culture Studies, American Artifacts represents the first methodologically unified compilation of interpretive essays to treat a wide range of ordinary objects such as a teapot, card table, cigarette lighter, cellarette, telephone, quilt, money box, corset, parlor stove, lava lamp, footbridge, locket, food mill, and Argand lamp. The volume, as a result, should prove of interest not just to cultural historians and to historians of art (who will find it a refreshingly enjoyable as well as eminently teachable) but to a non- academic audience alike including collectors – in short, to all those curious about meaning that lies hidden in things. The volume’s several introductions, featuring an illuminating essay by co-editor Jules Prown, Paul Mellon Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University, serve to situate its contributions historically while offering nstructional assignments that alone should make the text indispensable as a pedagogic tool for years to come.