American Material Culture

A few days ago I picked up a pretty good volume. 


Martin, Ann Smart, and J. Ritchie Garrison, editors. American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field. Winterthur, Del: Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997


It comes out of the American Material Cultures conferences that had been happening at The Winterthur Museum one of the best museums for American decorative arts. The book covers both direct and theoretical writing on material culture. The introduction is a good overview of the broad range of disciplines and theoretical outlook of the field. Like most good volumes it presented other works that I want to track down. 


The first chapter is about the development and significance of the American axe.  A great read about how the american axe came to be differentiated from and then dominate the European axe market. 


The third chapter is about the use of animals in Victorian objects. 


Also included in the work are chapters that cover the development of the hunting shirt, Tupperware, and the often overlooked owners manual. 


The chapter on owners manuals is interesting because I had never thought about how items became more complex a larger public needed to have a way to access technical data and operations. I had taken it as a given that they existed, but they are a development that arose out of particular technological and sociological circumstances.  


There is a chapter about dolls and doll play that I have not read yet. It looks fruitful to finally explain to me the cultural appeal of dolls. 


There is also a chapter about the introduction and spread of the pizza in the U.S.