The Colonial Craftsman

Excellent study examines lives and work of American cabinetmakers, silversmiths, pewterers, printers, painters, blacksmiths, and many other artisans, before 1775. "A fascinating study." — The New Yorker. 18 illustrations.

Describes the shops, working methods, and products of the different types of tradesmen and craftsmen who shaped the early American economy.

Profiles the lives of those who worked as craftsmen in colonial America, including apprentices, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, silversmiths, wigmakers, and printers.

The aura and romance of Old California lives on in this treasury of inviting homes. The California House presents the magic of the "golden state," that land of infinite promise and dreams, the most tangible expression of which can be found in the homes built by early California dreamers. Here domestic visions of tranquility and repose were inventively realized—in stucco or stone, wood and wrought iron, plaster, and glass and tile. Spanish Colonial Revival–style homes with elaborate wrought-iron window grilles, romantic, shadowy interiors, and lush courtyard gardens stand beside other particularly Californian architectural wonders such as the San Francisco Victorian Painted Lady, the Monterey Colonial, Eurekan Queen Anne, and the homey California Arts & Crafts. Including houses designed by luminaries George Washington Smith, Stanford White, Greene & Greene, and Reginald Johnson, this book will fascinate both the architecture aficionado and interior design enthusiasts, as well as the everyday lover of homes. Including, but going beyond, the much-adored Spanish style (in its many manifestations) and Mission Revival, the book features as well the Victorian of San Francisco's Painted Lady and Eureka's Queen Anne, Monterey Colonial, California Arts & Crafts, French Chateau, classic Colonial farm house, and more. All new color photography of 25 houses in California ranging in style from Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission, Victorian, Queen Anne, California Arts & Crafts, Monterey, French Chateau, Colonial Farm House. The book includes little known California work by well known architect Stanford White, known primarily for his East Coast work (designer of the original Penn Station with McKim, Mead & White, and original Madison Square Garden, and many others); as well as the Magdelena Zanone House (Queen Anne late Victorian style home in Eureka, CA); the Murphy House, San Francisco (Classic French Chateau); a Gothic Victorian 1860s home in Sonoma; Casa Amesti (Monterey style home); "El Cerrito" designed by Russel Ray and Winsor Soule and built in 1913 in Santa Barbara (an amalgam of Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival); the Frothingham House designed by George Washington Smith in 1922 (Spanish Colonial Rev.); Cuartro Ventos House by Reginald Johnson, 1929 in Santa Barbara; William Edwards House by Roland E. Coate, Sr. in San Marino, 1926; Robinson House by Greene and Greene in Pasadena, 1905; Sack House in Berkeley (California Arts & Crafts) Brune-Reutlinger House in San Francisco (classic Painted Lady Victorian); a colonial mid-19th cent farm house in Sonoma; "Mariposa," classic Spanish style in Montecito; The Marston House in San Diego (Arts & Crafts/Tudoresque); Rancho Los Alamos De Santa Elena in Los Alamos (Span. Col. Rev.); Pepper Hill Farm in Balard.

An Archetype Press book.

Thomas Dennis emigrated to America from England in 1663, settling in Ipswich, a Massachusetts village a long day's sail north of Boston. He had apprenticed in joinery, the most common method of making furniture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, and he became Ipswich's second joiner, setting up shop in the heart of the village. During his lifetime, Dennis won wide renown as an artisan. Today, connoisseurs judge his elaborately carved furniture as among the best produced in seventeenth-century America. Robert Tarule, historian and accomplished craftsman, brilliantly recreates Dennis's world in recounting how he created a single oak chest. Writing as a woodworker himself, Tarule vividly portrays Dennis walking through the woods looking for the right trees; sawing and splitting the wood on site; and working in his shop on the chest—planing, joining, and carving. Dennis inherited a knowledge of wood and woodworking that dated back centuries before he was born, and Tarule traces this tradition from Old World to New. He also depicts the natural and social landscape in which Dennis operated, from the sights, sounds, and smells of colonial Ipswich and its surrounding countryside to the laws that governed his use of trees and his network of personal and professional relationships. Thomas Dennis embodies a world that had begun to disappear even during his lifetime, one that today may seem unimaginably distant. Imaginatively conceived and elegantly executed, The Artisan of Ipswich gives readers a tangible understanding of that distant past.