Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America

For devotees of American decorative arts, Wallace Nutting (1861–1941) needs little introduction. A Congregational minister turned author, photographer, and wildly successful entrepreneur, Nutting was the principal authority on early American furniture for much of the twentieth century and played an important role in the development of a colonial revival aesthetic and ideology. He collected, reproduced, and marketed colonial artifacts, and the goods and experiences he offered his middle-class customers promoted his idealized notion of a time and place that he called "Old America." This handsomely illustrated book is the first full-length study of Nutting’s life and work. Thomas Andrew Denenberg describes Nutting’s interrelated endeavors, from his varied writings (including Furniture of the Pilgrim Century and the monumental three-volume Furniture Treasury) to his photography (both amateur and professional), chain of restored museum houses, renowned collection of seventeenth-century furniture, reproduction colonial furniture business, and advertising program. By charting Nutting’s activities, Denenberg creates a picture of an influential cultural critic who deftly combined myth and materialism, contributing significantly to both the growth of consumerism and the development of an antimodern worldview in the twentieth-century United States.