When did America become so obsessed with its pets? It wasn’t as recently as you might think. In fact, as Katherine C. Grier shows us in this lively social history, Americans have a long and abiding fascination with their furry, feathery, and sometimes scaly friends. Pets in America is the first comprehensive, thoroughly entertaining account of our long history of animal keeping. From White House gerbils to Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s many cats, from drug-sniffing dogs to celebrity horses, from pet food to training to birdcages to art to cemeteries—no aspect of pet culture is left unexplored. Peppered with the warmth and humor of anecdotes from period diaries, letters, catalogs, and newspapers, Pets in America is also packed with more than one hundred whimsical pieces of pet Americana—illustrations and photographs of all of man’s best friends. Pets in America is fun social history for a popular audience and pet lovers everywhere.

Pets in America: A History

History

Grier, Katherine C.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Mariner Books

Entertaining and informative, Pets in America is a portrait of Americans' relationships with the cats, dogs, birds, fishes, rodents, and other animals we call our own. More than 60 percent of U.S. households have pets, and America grows more pet-friendly every day. But as Katherine C. Grier demonstrates, the ways we talk about and treat our pets--as companions, as children, and as objects of beauty, status, or pleasure--have their origins long ago. Grier begins with a natural history of animals as pets, then discusses the changing role of pets in family life, new standards of animal welfare, the problems presented by borderline cases such as livestock pets, and the marketing of both animals and pet products. She focuses particularly on the period between 1840 and 1940, when the emotional, behavioral, and commercial characteristics of contemporary pet keeping were established. The story is filled with the warmth and humor of anecdotes from period diaries, letters, catalogs, and newspapers. Filled with illustrations reflecting the whimsy, the devotion, and the commerce that have shaped centuries of American pet keeping, Pets in America ultimately shows how the history of pets has evolved alongside changing ideas about human nature, child development, and community life. This book accompanies a museum exhibit, "Pets in America," which opens at the McKissick Museum in Columbia, South Carolina, in December 2005 and will travel to five other cities from May 2006 through May 2008.

Americas

Univ of North Carolina Pr

The rich colors of Fiestaware . . . the translucent beauty of Waterford crystal . . . nothing adds personality to a celebration like the right tableware. But beyond their appeal to all who want to entertain in style, and their value as collectibles, china and glass wares mirror the profound cultural and economic shifts in 20th-century America and provide a unique vantage point from which to view our society. 
Illustrated with more than 200 photographs of enticing glass and ceramic objects, this luxurious volume-which accompanies an exhibit organized by the Dallas Museum of Art-is the first to take a comprehensive look at the modern tableware used in American homes, treating its cultural and business history as well as its design. From table settings for turn-of-the-century ladies' luncheons to trendy accessories for suburban barbecues in the post-World War II years to the tinfoil trays invented for TV dinners, this fascinating book has it all. 
250 illustrations, 200 in full color, 10 line drawings, 9 x 12" 
CHARLES L. VENABLE, prize-winning author of Abrams' highly successful Silver in America, is deputy director and chief curator at the Dallas Museum of Art. KATHERINE C. GRIER, a professor at the University of South Carolina, has written extensively on ceramic history and material culture. ELLEN P. DENKER is a museum consultant and a scholar in ceramics and cultural history. 
STEPHEN G. HARRISON is an emerging scholar in the field of material culture and assistant curator at the Dallas Museum of 
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE The Newark Museum, New JerseyMar. 15-June 18, 2000 Dallas Museum of ArtJuly 23, 2000-Jan. 7, 2001

China and Glass in America, 1880-1980: From Table Top to TV Tray

Arts & Photography

Venable, Charles L.

Denker, Ellen

Harrison, Stephen G.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Harry N. Abrams

In Culture and Comfort Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and commercialization, its ties to industry and commerce—in the form of more affordable, machine-made furniture and drapery—became stronger.By the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile. Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made it available to all, Culture and Comfort reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.

Culture and Comfort: People, Parlors, and Upholstery 1850-1930

Univ of Massachusetts Pr

In Culture and Comfort Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and commercialization, its ties to industry and commerceâin the form of more affordable, machine-made furniture and draperyâbecame stronger. By the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile. Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made it available to all, Culture and Comfort reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.

Culture & comfort: People, parlors, and upholstery, 1850-1930

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Distributed by the University of Massachusetts Press

The University of North Carolina Press

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