This book is the world's largest compendium of maker marks found on American trade silver between 1682 and 1855. It features over 600 individual marks from hundreds of silversmiths in Colonial America, Canada, Great Britain, and France. This is a color edition featuring a detailed illustrated glossary, index, and many full-color plates.

In North America's Indian Trade in European Commerce and Imagination, Colpitts offers new perspectives on Europe's contact with America by examining the ideas, debates and questions arising in the trading that linked newcomers with Native people. European capitalization of the Indian Trade, beginning in the 16th century, forced newcomers to confront the meaning and legitimacy of traditional gift economies and assess the vice and virtue of the commerce they pursued in the New World. Making use of French and English colonization texts, published narratives and state colonial papers, the author explores how European capital investments, credit, profits and commercial linkages elaborated and complicated understandings of North American people in the period of colonization.

Study describes in chronological order how the various trade ornaments (material culture) were used from initial contact to circa 1900 by representative tribes of the seven major native groups of Canada. Based on extensive search of published and manuscript sources, supplemented by examination of historical paintings, photographs and ethnographical specimens.

Illustrates the development of religious art in northern New Mexico over a period of 150 years through more than three hundred santos.

Discusses the traditional adornment of North American Indians, covering the furs of the subarctic, the shells of the woodland tribes, the plateau area beadwork, the Northwest Coast jewelers, and the turquoise of the Southwest.

An illustrated guide to North American Indian arts and crafts.

"Even before the American Revolution, the artists and craftsmen of our young country were forging a distinguished American identity through beautiful examples of fine and decorative arts. Many of the finest examples of the work created during the earliest years of the country's history--from 1730 to 1840--were collected by the U.S. Department of State to decorate the reception rooms where important statesmen and diplomats are greeted. Highlights from this prestigious collection of American art and craft will tour in a nationwide exhibition for the first time. Becoming a Nation features more than 100 objects from the exhibition, each accompanied by detailed essays. The book includes paintings by such notable American masters as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Fitz Hugh Lane; exceptional works of silver by Paul Revere and Myer Myers; and exquisite baroque, rococo, and neoclassical furniture crafted in Portsmouth, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, and New York. A definitive study, Becoming a Nation recommends itself to experts and amateurs alike"--Publisher description.

The author has matched maker's marks used on jewelry, pots, fetish carvings, rugs, and baskets with their names, tribes, relatives, and style notes.