The story of life in New England from before the American Revolution to the twentieth century. Windows on the Past will take you on a tour of four centuries of home building, with fascinating interiors and furnishings; family ties to a wide variety of homes; advances in cooking, heating, plumbing, and lighting; the evolution of dining rituals; and classic landscapes, flower and kitchen gardens, and working farms. The book has been updated with new, richly illustrated chapters on the changing roles of servants in running the New England household and on the Historic New England Stewardship Program, which protects more than seventy-five privately owned historic properties. Through these windows on the past, discover Historic New England. Lavishly illustrated with 275 color and historic black-and-white photographs.

Windows on the Past: Four Centuries of New England Homes

History

Nylander, Jane C.

Americas

Historic New England

This important book, the result of discoveries made during an exhaustive survey of Portsmouth furniture at more than 210 sites throughout the country, places the furniture makers of Portsmouth alongside those of Newport, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York as creators of some of the finest early American furniture. The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), a regional museum with more than forty properties, owns seven historic houses in the Portsmouth area. The objects in these houses constitute the largest collection of Portsmouth furniture anywhere. The present volume results from intensive study of SPNEA's Portsmouth holdings, surviving documents, and objects in both private and public collections. The research has uncovered much about the mercantile aristocracy that purchased and used the furniture and about the community of craftsmen who adapted English designs to satisfy their customers' tastes. With essays on the social history of Portsmouth, furniture production in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and entries for 117 objects, the book provides the first comprehensive study of the defining characteristics of Portsmouth furniture from 1670 to 1840.

Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Jobe, Brock W.

Antiques & Collectibles

An inspiring account of the superb collection of New England country arts of the 17th through the 19th centuries assembled little by little over six decades by Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little.

Little by Little: Six Decades of Collecting American Decorative Arts

Arts & Photography

Little, Nina Fletcher

History & Criticism

A classic work on early American examples of this domestic art is once again available with a new introduction and updated bibliography.

Bed Hangings: A Treatise on Fabrics and Styles in the Curtaining of Beds, 1650–1850

Beauport is the tantalizing personal statement of interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper. Built as a summer home, each room presents a theme that showcases Sleeper's amazing collection of thousands of decorative arts objects. This dazzling book of photographs and text offers an intriguing window on decorative art traditions of the past.

Beauport: The Sleeper McCann House

Curtis, Nancy

Nylander, Richard C.

Cameras float coastward. Almost every old family photograph album contains snapshots of children and sand pails, teenagers frolicking in surf or rowing a rental skiff, young couples half blinded by love and half blinded by beach-reflected sun, mothers with infants shaded by makeshift tents, and old-timers ensconced in folding beach chairs, often shielded by umbrellas.... Now and then the rummager of attics and antique shops finds other photographs, usually made from ferries or other commercial craft passing parallel to industrial waterfronts, beneath drawbridges, beside shipyards, sweeping professional and holiday-making image-makers just a wee bit offshore. Sometimes the photographs lie mixed with memorabilia: the steamship ticket or schedule, vacation map, restaurant menu, advertising label or other ephemera that people picked up, brought home, and preserved as they did shells, rounded stones, and sea glass gleaned from beaches. Taken together, arranged and rearranged, juxtaposed and analyzed, they form a kaleidoscopic vision...." From the Introduction by John R. Stilgoe The Camera's Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England is a wonderful collection of historic photographs, paired with a rich assortment of ephemera - the subtle colors of an old postcard, the seductive details of an advertisement, a gay poster - engagingly captioned by W. H. Bunting. This page-by-page panorama of New England coastal activity from the late-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries ranges from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from leisure and recreation to hard work. The imagery is mostly bygone but still strongly connected to our present-day landscape. The Camera's Coast began several years ago as a traveling Historic New England exhibition of photographs with informative captions by guest curator Bunting, a maritime historian who brings old photographs to life with small stories - sometimes humorous, sometimes heroic, sometimes tragic, but always captivating. In this beautifully designed book, additional images from Historic New England's diverse collection of ephemera have been carefully selected by the editors to augment the photographs and to flesh out Bunting's stories. This book is the first in a Historic New England series that will feature its collections in new ways that will appeal to both the specialist and the casual reader. Historic New England is presented by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

The Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England

Bunting, W. H.

Photography & Video

It is amazing what this one room--at times a harried workspace and at others the sentimental heart of the home--has meant to people over the course of more than four centuries. America's Kitchens tells the story of this important room and features New England hearths, detached kitchens on southern plantations, Spanish colonial kitchens of the Southwest, elaborate nineteenth-century kitchens in the Midwest, and middle-class open-plan homes of 1950s suburbia. The book traces technological developments such as the introduction of the cast-iron cookstove, the efficiency of the Hoosier cabinet, and the impact of the frozen food industry to suggest how these innovations have transformed kitchen work and changed women's lives. Innovatively designed and lavishly illustrated with historic drawings, photographs, and a fascinating array of ephemera from Historic New England's diverse collections, America's Kitchens describes what it was like to live with and work in kitchens that had none of the conveniences we take for granted. At the same time, the book analyzes the profound place of the kitchen in our own lives today.

America’s Kitchens

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Carlisle, Nancy

Nasardinov, Melinda Talbot

Pustz, Jennifer

Regional & International

As the center of domestic life, the house is perhaps the most important building type in a democratic society. Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England showcases a variety of drawings of domestic buildings that range in date from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, and depict an array of building types estates, modest single-family houses, summer cottages, and even a typical Boston multi-family dwelling known as a three-decker. Architectural drawings have a history of their own, and this exceptional assemblage outlines how the medium has morphed to meet the growing expectations of clients, the increasing complexity of the construction process, and the demands of new technologies. A large number of beautifully executed perspectives created primarily for formal presentations to clients are featured. As Benjamin Linfoot put it back in 1884, the "architect . . . must keep his client's enthusiasm alive and active by sending or submitting bright, jaunty little perspectives of his contemplated work." This survey successfully melds Gilded Age works from the venerable offices McKim, Mead White, and Peabody Stearns with designs from a century before and after, ranging from the hand of influential pattern-book author Asher Benjamin to those drafted by Dutch-born modernist R. W. Huygens. Drawing Toward Home illustrates changes in taste and technology and presents many of the drawings as works of art. It includes designs by both famous and little-known architects and houses designed in the Federal, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, and International styles. From Great Diamond Island, Maine, to Boston's Beacon Street, and from cottages on Cape Cod to mansions in Newport, the houses featured in this book remind us that the architecture of New England is a touchstone of American architecture.

Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England

An iconic feature of the Maine coast (and in a few places inland), lighthouses have served as important navigational aids but also as tourist attractions, art subjects, and advertising symbols. This lavishly illustrated third volume in Historic New England's visual history series explores the lives and legends of lighthouse keepers, shares tales of maritime disasters, examines the architecture of lighthouses, and discusses efforts to preserve lighthouses themselves. It also explains how Maine's lighthouses have inspired myriad forms of representation, from paintings, photographs, and children's stories to tabletop models and all sorts of practical bric-a-brac. The lights were key to the development of the tourist trade in Maine (beyond facilitating safe landings), and they are a ubiquitous symbol on corporate logos, advertisements, souvenirs, and collectibles--from the past to the present. The ten chapters are from a variety of contributors, and each chapter is richly illustrated with photographs and ephemera culled from private and public collections. Dynamically designed with fold-out covers, this book is indeed a treasure-trove of lighthouse information and images.

From Guiding Lights to Beacons for Business: The Many Lives of Maine’s Lighthouses

Business & Money

Industries

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Historic New England publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Historic New England

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Historic New England publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Windows on the Past: Four Centuries of New England Homes

Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast

Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast

Little by Little: Six Decades of Collecting American Decorative Arts

Bed Hangings: A Treatise on Fabrics and Styles in the Curtaining of Beds, 1650–1850

Beauport: The Sleeper McCann House

The Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England

America’s Kitchens

Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England

From Guiding Lights to Beacons for Business: The Many Lives of Maine’s Lighthouses