The Colonial Furniture of New England: A Study of the Domestic Furniture in Use in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Irving Whitall Lyon, M.D.

Edité par Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Cambridge: The Riverside Press, Boston and New York, 1891

A propos de cet article

This is the true first edition of Irving Whitall Lyon's foundational study of American colonial furniture, published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1891. Lyon, a Hartford, Connecticut physician and member of the Connecticut Historical Society, began collecting seventeenth-century carved oak furniture in 1877 and undertook a systematic study of it around 1880, drawing on firsthand examination of surviving pieces alongside probate inventories and other period documents. The result became the standard reference on the subject for decades and remains a frequently cited foundational text for collectors and scholars of early American furniture. The book is fully illustrated, organized by chapter into Chests, Cupboards, Chests of Drawers, Desks, Chairs, Tables, and Clocks, and includes the original errata leaf correcting the known transposition of the plates for Figures 61 and 62 and Figures 90 and 91.

The binding is the original dark blue ribbed cloth, with an elaborate gilt architectural cartouche to the front board incorporating the full title and author, still bright and sharp, and gilt titling to the spine that remains legible. The spine cloth shows genuine wear with some fraying at the head, and the corners are lightly bumped, consistent with a well-used reference copy rather than one that sat shelved. The frontispiece has lightly offset onto the facing title page, a faint ink-transfer common in books of this age. A former owner appears to have used the printed errata leaf to correct the plate labels by hand, penciling small circles around the figure numbers on the Fig. 61/62 & Fig. 90/91 plate pages; the marks are light and do not distract from the page. Aside from these points, the text and the numerous plates throughout are clean and sharp. The book carries the bookplate of Albert Whitman Claflin, a well-designed Colonial Revival doorway design featuring a fanlight window and Queen Anne chair, an apt piece of provenance for a book on this subject, tipped to the front pastedown.

A solid, presentable, and complete first edition of the standard early reference on New England colonial furniture, well suited to collectors and students of American decorative arts and furniture history.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1782927047990

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Colonial Furniture of New England: A Study of the Domestic Furniture in Use in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• Éditeur: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Cambridge: The Riverside Press, Boston and New York
• Date de parution: 1891
• Langue: anglais
• Reliure: Couverture rigide
• Édition: Edition originale
• Impression: 1er tirage
• État de l'article: Assez bon
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • 19th-Century Decorative Arts & Design