Examining the material, political, and cultural landscapes navigated by East Tennessee cabinetmaker Lewis Buckner (1856-1924), this article draws on archival sources, extant furniture, and oral histories to situate Buckner within broader narratives of Black artisanship in Appalachia and community-building during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow eras. Working in rural Sevier County, Tennessee, Buckner synthesized international design movements, particularly Eastlake and the aesthetic movement, with regional motifs and symbolic carvings to produce furniture and architectural interiors for both Black and white clients. As industrialization and voter suppression laws reshaped East Tennessee's landscape, Buckner remained resilient, transitioning from independent craftsmanship to employment with large manufacturing firms and exerting his political agency, as evidenced by his role as a delegate to the 1886 Republican Senatorial Convention. Buckner's material legacy and civic participation challenge dominant historical narratives about the South and affirm the enduring role of Black craftspeople in shaping the physical and political landscapes in rural Appalachia.
Exploring the critical role of enslaved and free Black craftsmen in Charleston's cabinetmaking industry during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this article argues that South Carolina's elite planter class, driven by wealth accumulated through a plantation economy based on slavery, created a demand for fashionable furnishings that Charleston's craftsmen met through the exploitation of enslaved and free Black labor. Using Thomas Elfe's account books and other archival sources, the author demonstrates how enslaved artisans were integral to the production, repair, and sale of furniture. Despite governmental attempts to regulate the hiring and training of enslaved workers, Charleston's cabinetmakers continued to rely heavily on their labor because of economic incentives. The author concludes that understanding the full impact of Charleston's eighteenth-century furniture industry requires acknowledging the contributions of African and African American craftspeople and unskilled laborers. This perspective challenges traditional narratives and encourages museum professionals to interpret decorative arts not just as objects of beauty but also as artifacts that reveal the many hands and lives behind their craftsmanship and how they were shaped by systemic exploitation.
Viewing the global impact of Asian aesthetics through a multidisciplinary lens, this photo essay emphasizes the complexity and entanglement of aesthetic experiences across cultures and time. Rejecting binary frameworks like East versus West or making versus judging, the author argues that aesthetic decisions are shaped by dynamic interactions among materials, makers, environments, and audiences. Drawing on theories from material culture, anthropology, and political ecology, the essay highlights how Asian artistic expressions, such as textiles, ceramics, and architecture, were adapted, appropriated, and reimagined globally, often through informal, interpersonal exchanges rather than imperial force alone. Rather than viewing these influences through the lens of domination or commodification, the author calls for a reconciliatory approach that acknowledges past injustices while embracing the creative possibilities of cross-cultural aesthetic exchange.
Exploring the complex history, conservation, and material analysis of three nineteenth-century Chinese export lacquer screens in the Winterthur Museum collection, the authors use archival correspondence between curator Joseph Downs and conservator Susumu Hirota to reveal how early restoration practices-though well-intentioned-often altered the original appearance of these fragile objects. The study combines historical research with scientific techniques, including stratigraphic analysis and pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, to uncover the layered composition of lacquer finishes and the diverse materials used by Cantonese artisans. The authors argue that these screens are hybrid artifacts, shaped as much by Western tastes and interventions as by Chinese craftsmanship. Conservation efforts must therefore balance respect for original materials with the realities of past restorations and environmental degradation. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in understanding and preserving Chinese export lacquerware, emphasizing that their current appearance reflects a confluence of cultural, economic, and material histories.
Proposing a new structured study under the term "critical mending," this article examines stocking darning and the properties of a darn through traditional archival research and practical, hands-on analysis of surviving mended hosiery. Applying critical mending on two collections of American stockings that span a hundred years reveals implications of virtue and poverty and the necessity of textile evidence to better understand historical and cultural context. Focusing on the heavily darned silk stockings of Stephen Girard (1750-1831) and Estella Doerr Haase (1896-1994), the author uncovers private and personal aspects of stocking darning and reveals the technological expertise and artistry involved in a mend. The mend's immediacy and pragmatism show the living hand as no schoolroom exercise can, and when contextualized the intricate science of the mend becomes apparent.
Academic and popular engagement with needlework created during the seventeenth through to the nineteenth century has labored under the influence of both a romantic reliance on text rather than object and a regard of embroidery through a feminist lens, casting it as both the product of, and resistance to, misogyny. Relying on embodied knowledge in combination with rigorous statistical analysis presents an alternative interpretation. This study will reveal that education built female agency and competency in a wide range of applicable skills through an investigation of the large numbers of polychrome and whitework samplers, and pictures, mirrors, and boxes with allegorical or Old Testament stories worked in tent, satin, or stumpwork stitches-objects previously identified as English boarding school works-including the few examples from seventeenth-century colonial America. When these objects are approached from a data-driven standpoint-and contextualized through the life and career of one embroiderer, Martha Edlin-female agency, creativity, and problem solving in everything from coverture to business management become clear, complicating the current narratives of women's education and power.
