Describes and illustrates the work of craftsmen and artisans in Colonial America. Shows types of work done in town shops and manufacturies, as well as, in homes, village shops, and country forges.
Young Center books in Anabaptist & Pietist studies
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages 437-455) and index.
Summary
"While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century, even though it has never been "refreshed" by later waves of immigration from abroad.In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and conservative Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people"--the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents--most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers--this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story"--
xv, 400 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 27 cm.
Series
Early American studies
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [335]-377) and index.
Contents
Painters and patrons -- The village enlightenment -- Cosmopolitan communities -- Itinerants and inventors -- A tale of two chairmaking towns -- Provincial portraits -- Daguerreotypes : the industrial image.
Summary
In the middle of the nineteenth century, middle-class Americans embraced a new culture of domestic consumption, one that centered on chairs and clocks as well as family portraits and books. How did that new world of goods, represented by Victorian parlors filled with overstuffed furniture and daguerreotype portraits, come into being? This work highlights the significant role of provincial artisans in four crafts in the northeastern United States, chairmaking, clockmaking, portrait painting, and book publishing, to explain the shift from preindustrial society to an entirely new configuration of work, commodities, and culture. As a whole, the book proposes an innovative analysis of early nineteenth century industrialization and the development of a middle class consumer culture. It relies on many of the objects beloved by decorative arts scholars and collectors to evoke the vitality of village craft production and culture in the decades after the War of Independence. It grounds its broad narrative of cultural change in case studies of artisans, consumers, and specific artifacts. Each chapter opens with an "object lesson" and weaves an object-based analysis together with the richness of individual lives. The path that such craftspeople and consumers took was not inevitable; on the contrary, as the author, a historian demonstrates, it was strewn with alternative outcomes, such as decentralized production with specialized makers. The book offers a collective biography of the post-Revolutionary generation, gathering together the case studies of producers and consumers who embraced these changes, those who opposed them, or, most significantly, those who fashioned the myriad small changes that coalesced into a new Victorian cultural order that none of them had envisioned or entirely appreciated.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 46) and index.
Summary
Describes the crafts of Pennsylvania Dutch living in a rural atmosphere. Includes making quilts, pottery, and tin and tole ware. "Eva Costabel introduces the reader to the life of a typical Pennsylvania Dutch farming family of the colony and to the many crafts produced by the German settlers htere, including quilting, pottery-making, tombstone-carving, woodworking, calligraphy, glass-blowing, and gunsmithing, among others. Her full-color drawings, reflecting the style of the Pennsylvania Dutch, illustrate their many contributions to American life, art, and crafts." [dust jacket]
Amos trades up -- Eilenshpiggel and his shenanigans -- John the blacksmith visits the devil -- Tales tall and taller -- Graven images & the legends that grow around them -- Pennsylvania German humor -- A true ghost story.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-314) and index.
Contents
Moses Dissinger : evangelist and patriot / by Thomas R. Brendle -- Parre Schtories : anecdotes / collected by Albert F. Buffington -- Life of Henry Harbaugh / by Linn Harbaugh -- Journey to Pennsylvania / by Gottlieb Mittelberger -- The journal and letters of Johannes Kelpius -- Chronicon Ephratense : the journal of Ephrata Brother Ezechiel Sangmeister -- The music of the Ephrata Clister / by Conrad Beissel -- Mystical sayings of Beissel, 1730 -- Life's description / by Ezechiel Sangmeister -- The red hills / by Cornielius Weygandt -- Christmas in Pennsylvania : a folk-cultural study / by Alfred L. Shoemaker -- The Moravian Christmas -- The long hidden friend / by John Hohman -- Pennsylvania German folk medicine / edited by Thomas R. Brendle -- Beliefs and superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans / edited by Edwin M. Fogel --
Pennsylvania German folk art / by John J. Stoudt -- Folk art of rural Pennsylvania / by Frances Lichten -- The legends of Mountain Mary -- The tale of Regina Hartman -- Poems from Life of the Reverend Henry Harbaugh / by Linn Harbaugh and from Harbaugh's Harfe / edited by B. Bausman -- Rachel Bahn : "The Pennsylvania German poetess" -- Excerpts from Pennsylvania German folk tales, legends, once-upon-a-time stories, maxims and sayings / by Thomas Brendle and William Troxell.
