Reviews for Women's Painted Furniture, 1790-1830: American Schoolgirl Art

The average rating for Women's Painted Furniture, 1790-1830: American Schoolgirl Art based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-05-03 00:00:00 William Tompkins No one needs to read this cover to cover like a novel, which is what I did, but Women's Painted Furniture would be a complement to any book collection, just as a painted table by the daughter of the family is a complement to any room. Women and men have been decorating furniture since furniture was invented: decorating the pants off everything is a universal human trait; but the pieces discussed in this book are narrowly defined: monochromatic flowers and scenes painted on boxes of light wood at the few girls' schools that existed in the United States between the creation of the Republic and the 1830s, when this art form went out of style. Salm points out that several of the students who created surviving examples of this art form are all cousins of each other; there just weren't that many upper class teen women in formal educational establishments in a sparsely populated nascent country during those years, and this art form did not spread out from the schools. Most of the designs on the boxes and tables are taken directly from design books, which Salm traces. The quality of the art ranges from naive to skilled, but is lovely to look at as an example of art in a historical context. Salm is also able to trace the school proprietresses and instructresses and some of the student painters. This book made me want to go back to several Connecticut museums and look at the pieces themselves.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-08 00:00:00 Dror Birnbaum Women's Painted Furniture, 1790-1830: American Schoolgirl Art by Betsy Krieg Salm (University Press of New England, 2010) is a treasure and keepsake. Between the late 1700s and 1830 American Schoolgirls accomplished watercolor paintings on fine wooden pieces that are together valuable antiques and a pathway to our past. Discover the long lost art of painting on wood by American Schoolgirl Artisans in the earliest days of the nation. Emily Dickinson's paternal aunt Lucretia, Harriet and Catherine Beecher, and the daughters of some of New England's most famous families were artisans of women's painted furniture. This lost art and the history of its students and practitioners is an amazing untold tale of women's education. Abigail Adams' writings look less radical against the recovered history of women's education. The roots to America's rural Female Academies and Eastern seaboard Women's Colleges are bound together by its focus on this art and its instruction. Betsy Krieg Salm is an artist who creates historical reproductions of these early American pieces. In her book she shares her recipes, techniques, historical sources and the provenance for the never-published-before photographed items, originals, and her reproductions. This is a book to enjoy during the end of winter. It is filled with the whimsy of young girls' paintings filled with flowers and insects, animals and scenic summer views. It makes you want to go through it with your daughter just so she sees what young girls accomplished under instruction more than 200 years ago. See if you can cultivate the artist in a young woman today: share this book and celebrate the contributions to history of women worldwide.