Antiques and Collectibles - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Irish People, Irish Linen

Fri, 09 Sep 2011

Irish People, Irish Linen (2011)

By Kathleen Curtis Wilson

The story of Irish linen is a story of the Irish people. Many thousands of men and women made Irish linen a global product and an international brand. It is also a story of innovation and opportunity. Irish linen has served its makers as sail cloth of incredible strength and durability for world exploration and trade; it has functioned as watertight containers for farmers and firemen; it has soothed the brows of royalty and absorbed the sweat of the working class. As outerwear and underwear, linen has clothed men, women, and children from birth to death—the rich and powerful, poor and pitiful alike.

Into this cultural history Kathleen Curtis Wilson weaves personal narratives and the words and songs of individual spinners, factory workers, and out-workers like Sarah McCabe, who created fabulous linen lace; Sarah Leech, who wrote poetry as she spun fine thread; the three Patterson women, who worked in Mossley Mill for a total of one hundred years; and the Herdman brothers, who settled in county Tyrone to build a mill and a utopian community.

Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, each chapter tells of art, social and economic history, design, architecture, technology, and cultural traditions that celebrate the linen industry.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Irish+People%2C+Irish+Linen.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve

Tue, 15 Nov 2005

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve (2005)

By Ricky Clark

Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve includes early quilts brought from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio and contemporary quilts, including one by a conservative Amish woman and another inspired by Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Ricky Clark, one of Ohio's foremost quilt historians, has assembled exquisite examples of calamanco, “T” quilts, and borderless pieced quilts to show the influence of Connecticut aesthetics and history on the making of early quilts in this region. Rich in color, detail, and inventiveness, and often beautifully designed, the quilts of this region commemorate community history, from town fundraisers of the 1890s to a quilt designed by a Lake Erie shipbuilder. Sections of the book include quilts made during the Civil War and for postwar veterans' organizations as well as military and presidential quilts that relate to the history of the Western Reserve.

Quilt design in Ohio has been celebrated in biennial exhibits, round-robin quilts, and most recently proudly painted on barns in rural Ohio. Quilts of the Ohio Western Reserve, lavishly illustrated with forty color photos of quilts, launches the Ohio Quilt Series. A welcome addition to Ohio's cultural legacy, this book will interest the wider world of quilt and textile enthusiasts and historians.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Quilts+of+the+Ohio+Western+Reserve.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors

Wed, 12 Nov 2003

Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors (2003)

Edited by Jennifer L. Howe

In the early 1850s three British expatriates—Henry Lindley Fry, his son William Henry Fry, and Benn Pitman—settled in Cincinnati and launched one of the most important manifestations of Aesthetic movement furniture in the United States, the Cincinnati art-carved furniture movement. By the early 1870s the Frys began offering private instruction in woodcarving, and Pitman initiated classes at the School of Design (later the Art Academy of Cincinnati).

The majority of the woodcarving students were affluent women seeking suitable artistic pastimes, although some students enrolled to learn a marketable skill. The Frys and Pitman and their female students gained national acclaim and recognition for their woodcarving through their display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. National art journals featured Cincinnati woodcarving throughout the late 1870s and the 1880s and published articles by Pitman, a prolific writer and philosopher of the movement.

Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors is the first book devoted to the study of this nationally significant artistic movement. Edited by Jennifer L. Howe, with contributions by noted scholars, Cincinnati Art-Carved Furniture and Interiors situates the movement within the context of the city’s rich cultural heritage, documents the careers of the Frys and Pitman in England and America, explores their domestic and ecclesiastical interior commissions, and examines the central role women played in this movement.

The book includes a catalog of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s impressive holdings of Cincinnati art-carved furniture. An appendix presents biographical information on more than one thousand of the Frys’ and Pitman's woodcarving students, and numerous color plates and period photographs.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Cincinnati+Art-Carved+Furniture+and+Interiors.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin

Mon, 21 Jul 2003

The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin (2003)

By Anita J. Ellis

In 1877 the thirty-year-old artist Mary Louise McLaughlin wrote China Painting, the first manual on the subject in the United States written by a woman for women. Extremely successful, it is now accepted as the book that launched the china painting movement in America.

When in 1898 McLaughlin decided to produce porcelain, the most difficult of ceramics, she showed the determination and exactitude that were her trademarks. Already renowned as a ceramicist, she became the first to produce studio porcelain in America and the first to discover the technique for decorating under the glaze. Her work was welcomed with enthusiasm in New York and Paris.

Despite the enormous influence of Mary Louise McLaughlin on the history of American ceramics, Anita Ellis's The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin is the first definitive study dedicated to her accomplishments.

Anita Ellis depicts the many challenges McLaughlin encountered in pursuit of her ultimately successful career. Not the least of these was her rivalry with the formidable Maria Longworth Nichols, fellow Cincinnatian and founder of the Rookwood Pottery Company. Another was that of being a woman in the arts: her primary goal had been to paint portraits on canvas, but Victorian society did not afford opportunities in what was considered a male sphere.

Replete with historic photos and color illustrations of many of McLaughlin's works, The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin is a tribute to a woman artist who rose to one of the most esteemed positions in her field.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Ceramic+Career+of+M.+Louise+McLaughlin.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

The Cincinnati Wing

Sun, 11 May 2003

The Cincinnati Wing (2003)
The Story of Art in the Queen City

By Julie Aronson

On May 10, 2003, the Cincinnati Art Museum will celebrate the opening of the Cincinnati Wing: eighteen thousand square feet of handsomely renovated gallery space devoted to the museum’s renowned collections of painting, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, and metalwork by Cincinnati artists. The museum is the first in the country to reinterpret its American art collections with a regional emphasis, fostering civic pride and drawing attention to the achievements of the city’s artists.

In conjunction with the celebration, Ohio University Press is proud to publish The Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City, showcasing one of America's foremost art centers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The authors of this collection trace the thematic arrangement of the Cincinnati Wing galleries, situating the artwork in the context of the city’s history as it progressed from a frontier river town to an industrial powerhouse. The Cincinnati Wing provides a vivid picture of the fertile social and cultural climate that produced such prominent figures in the history of American art as sculptor Hiram Powers and painters Robert S. Duncanson, Frank Duveneck, and John H. Twachtman.

Cincinnati's contributions to the decorative arts are exemplified by the stunning ceramics of the celebrated Rookwood Pottery Company, the nation's leading art pottery firm, and by the city's lesser-known yet equally significant Aesthetic Movement furniture.

One hundred fifty-one color plates highlight the beauty and diversity of the Cincinnati Art Museum's collections and illuminate the Queen City's great artistic legacy.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/The+Cincinnati+Wing.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Ohio Is My Dwelling Place

Sun, 01 Dec 2002

Ohio Is My Dwelling Place (2002)
Schoolgirl Embroideries, 1800-1850

By Sue Studebaker

One of the most intriguing cultural artifacts of our nation's past was made by young girls—the embroidery sampler. In Ohio Is My Dwelling Place, American decorative arts expert Sue Studebaker documents the samplers created in Ohio prior to 1850, the girls who made them, their families, and the teachers who taught them to stitch.

In this lavishly illustrated book, these now highly prized works are coupled with the stories behind their creations and the circumstances under which they were sewn. Ohio Is My Dwelling Place also includes an extensive chart of known pioneer teachers and schools in Ohio, as well as maps depicting the counties where the samplers were made.

These samplers serve as a tangible and enduring legacy of Ohio's history, and readers will be intrigued and fascinated by the stories presented in this extraordinary keepsake volume.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Ohio+Is+My+Dwelling+Place.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

American Coverlets and Their Weavers

Sun, 30 Jun 2002

American Coverlets and Their Weavers (2002)
Coverlets from the Collection of Foster and Muriel McCarl

By Clarita S. Anderson

Coverlets woven in vibrant colors of red, blue, white, and green are as popular today as they were in the nineteenth century.

American Coverlets and Their Weavers is a lavishly illustrated guide to one of the premier collections of coverlets in the nation. As such, it is also an essential reference for collectors, historians, specialists in material culture, and others who are interested in American textiles.

Published in association with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, American Coverlets and Their Weavers is a work of impressive scholarship. Clarita S. Anderson has drawn upon her extensive research to identify and discuss 700 weavers and to relate details about their lives and professional careers.

In-depth discussions explore more than fifty coverlets, which are depicted in detail. Another key feature of the book is the annotated dictionary of professional American weavers of figured and fancy coverlets compiled from the University of Maryland Historic Textile Database and the research files at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition at the Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg between May 2002 and September 2003, American Coverlets and Their Weavers will be a treasured guide for collectors and historians alike.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/American+Coverlets+and+Their+Weavers.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Rookwood and the Industry of Art

Thu, 15 Mar 2001

Rookwood and the Industry of Art (2001)
Women, Culture, and Commerce, 1880-1913

By Nancy E. Owen

Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati--the largest, longest-lasting, and arguably most important American Art Pottery--reflected the country's cultural and commercial milieux in the production, marketing, and consumption of its own products.

Rookwood and the Industry of Art is a critical appreciation of Rookwood's rise to its commercial pinnacle, assessing the labor practices and production of ceramic ware as a way to explore anxiety about women's roles outside the home as well as about industrialization, immigration, and urbanization.

In this illustrated study, Nancy Owen analyzes the discrepancies between the concepts of fine art and culture and the managerial positioning of the firm as “an artist's studio, not a factory.” Owen also looks at the meaning of Americanness as portrayed in the choices of decoration and in the marketing campaigns that sought to elevate the ceramic ware to an artform.

For the collector as well as the cultural historian, Rookwood and the Industry of Art is a revealing and sensitive treatment of this uniquely American commercial and artistic phenomenon.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Rookwood+and+the+Industry+of+Art.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers

Wed, 01 Nov 2000

West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers (2000)
Echoes from the Hills

By Fawn Valentine

Tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, preserved for generations, handmade bed quilts are windows into the past. In 1983, three West Virginia county extension agents discussed the need to locate and document their state's historic quilts. Mary Nell Godbey, Margaret Meador, and Mary Lou Schmidt joined with other concerned women to found the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search.

The search focused on documenting quilts made in West Virginia before 1940, which marked the end of a fertile period in American quilt history and the beginning of a decline in quiltmaking that would continue until the 1970s. Ultimately, the search registered more than 4,000 quilts.

This effort has culminated in West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers: Echoes from the Hills, published by Ohio University Press on November 1, 2000, in association with the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search, Inc. The book includes 159 color photographs of selected quilts, with maps showing where they were made, a database analysis of the statewide survey, and the oral histories of descendants of quiltmakers.

“Quilts warm the body and the soul,” says Valentine. “A quilt can wrap the psyche in a loving embrace. Family quilts are symbols of bloodlines reaching across decades and generations.”

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/West+Virginia+Quilts+and+Quiltmakers.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.