The Consolidated Catalog To The Index Of American Design

This is an index to a visual survey (on microfiche no.91) of objects of decorative, folk and popular arts from the time of settlement to 1900.

Conceived as an effort to identify and preserve a national, ancestral aesthetic, the Index of American Design comprises 18,257 watercolor renderings of American folk and decorative arts objects from the colonial period through 1900.

This book presents watercolor renderings along with a selection of the artifacts in the Index of American Design, a visual archive of decorative, folk, and popular arts made in America from the colonial period to about 1900. Three essays explore the history, operation, and ambitions of the Index of American Design, examine folk art collecting in America during the early decades of the twentieth century, and consider the Index's role in the search for a national cultural identity in the early twentieth-century United States.