Congregational minister, author, photographer & entrepreneur, Wallace Nutting collected, reproduced & marketed colonial American artefacts.

Old-House Journal is the original magazine devoted to restoring and preserving old houses. For more than 35 years, our mission has been to help old-house owners repair, restore, update, and decorate buildings of every age and architectural style. Each issue explores hands-on restoration techniques, practical architectural guidelines, historical overviews, and homeowner stories--all in a trusted, authoritative voice.

Now in its sixth year, Early Homes is a biannual special edition that focuses on the period 1690—1850 and it's revivals, including Colonial and Neoclassical design. Each issue contains lavish photos and plenty of product sources.

Although individually and collectively Americans have many histories, the dominant view of our national past focuses on the colonial era. The reasons for this are many and complex, touching on stories of the country's origins and of the founding fathers, the privileged position in history granted the thirteen original colonies, and the ways in which the nation has adjusted to change and modernity. But no matter the cause, the result is obvious: images and forms derived from and related to America's colonial past are the single most popular form of cultural expression. Often conceived solely in architectural terms, from the red-brick and white-trimmed buildings that recall eighteenth-century James River estates to the clapboarded saltboxes that recall early New England, Colonial Revival is in fact better understood as a process of remembering. In Re-creating the American Past, architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson and a host of other scholars examine how and why Colonial Revival has persisted in modern times. The volume contains essays that explore Colonial Revival expressions in architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, decorative arts, and painting and sculpture, as well as the social, intellectual, and cultural background of the phenomena. Based on the University of Virginia's landmark 2000 conference "The Colonial Revival in America," Re-creating the American Past is a comprehensive and handsome volume that recovers the origins, characteristics, diversity, and significance of the Colonial Revival, situating it within the broader history of American design, culture, and society.

American art museums share a mission and format that differ from those of their European counterparts, which often have origins in aristocratic collections. This groundbreaking work recounts the fascinating story of the invention of the modern American art museum, starting with its roots in the 1870s in the craft museum type, which was based on London’s South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. At the turn of the twentieth century, American planners grew enthusiastic about a new type of museum and presentation that was developed in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Called Kulturgeschichte (cultural history) museums, they were evocative displays of regional history. American trustees, museum directors, and curators found that the Kulturgeschichte approach offered a variety of transformational options in planning museums, classifying and displaying objects, and broadening collecting categories, including American art and the decorative arts. Leading institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, adopted and developed crucial aspects of the Kulturgeschichte model. By the 1930s, such museum plans and exhibition techniques had become standard practice at museums across the country.

Typical architectural photography freezes buildings in an ideal moment and rarely captures what photographer Berenice Abbott called the medium's power to depict "how the past jostled the present." In Beyond the Architect's Eye, Mary N. Woods expands on this range of images through a rich analysis that commingles art, amateur, and documentary photography, genres usually not considered architectural but that often take the built environment as their subject. Woods explores how photographers used their built environment to capture the disparate American landscapes prior to World War II, when urban and rural areas grew further apart in the face of skyscrapers, massive industrialization, and profound cultural shifts. Central to this study is the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Marion Post Wolcott, but Woods weaves a wider narrative that also includes Alice Austen, Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Eudora Welty, Samuel Gottscho, Walker Evans, Max Waldman, and others. In such disparate places as New York City, the rural South, and the burgeoning metropolis of Miami, these unconventional architectural photographers observed buildings as deeply connected to their context. Whereas Stieglitz captured New York as the quintessential modern urban landscape in the period, the South was its opposite, a land supposedly frozen in the past. Yet just as this myth of the Old South crystallized in photographs like Johnston's, a New South shaped by popular culture and modern industry arose. Miami embodied both of these visions. In Wolcott's work, agricultural fields where stoop labor persisted were juxtaposed with Art Deco hotels, a popular modernism of the machine age that remade Miami Beach into a miniaturized "Manhattan on the beach." Beyond the Architect's Eye is a groundbreaking study that melds histories of American art, cities, and architecture with visual studies of landscape, photography, and cultural geography.

'This volume is a collection of seven fascinating articles...This is a revealing book that probes beneath the surface of what one participant calls the 'sheep to shawl' displays of such historic sites. It is a refreshing work well worth reading.'-THE HUDSON VALLEY REGIONAL REVIEW

National architectural magazine now in its fifteenth year, covering period-inspired design 1700–1950. Commissioned photographs show real homes, inspired by the past but livable. Historical and interpretive rooms are included; new construction, additions, and new kitchens and baths take their place along with restoration work. A feature on furniture appears in every issue. Product coverage is extensive. Experts offer advice for homeowners and designers on finishing, decorating, and furnishing period homes of every era. A garden feature, essays, archival material, events and exhibitions, and book reviews round out the editorial. Many readers claim the beautiful advertising—all of it design-related, no “lifestyle” ads—is as important to them as the articles.

An all-access pass to America's first (and favorite) reality television program -- boasting over ten million viewers each week -- Antiques Roadshow! If you're a fan of PBS's top-rated Antiques Roadshow, you've probably wondered -- what would it take to get your family treasure on the program? What happens to the antiques after the show airs? Are the appraisers ever wrong? And will Antiques Roadshow come to my hometown? In this four-color, fully illustrated guide to America's favorite treasure-hunting program, Antiques Roadshow Behind the Scenes reveals inside information about the participants, the appraisers, the fans, and the antiques that make up the show, direct from the woman who makes it all happen -- executive producer Marsha Bemko. Learn what it really takes to put on a Roadshow event (and why certain cities are more likely to get a visit from the show than others), who gets chosen to be on air (and what items producers are really looking for), what it takes to be an appraiser (and how even the experts make mistakes) ... and what happens when things go terribly wrong (such as the occasional antique that turns out to have been stolen!). In addition, learn which books, websites, and resources your favorite appraisers recommend, and get updates on some of the most popular and notorious items ever featured on the show. From priceless tips to the juicy family secrets hidden in dusty heirlooms, Antiques Roadshow Behind the Scenes is both an invaluable resource and a fascinating slice of Americana.