Product Description: The power of Christmas derives from the appeal of its repeated rituals, the presumed antiquity of its traditions, and its ability to adapt to changing cultural conditions. Christmas cards seemed inevitable and ubiquitous, but in recent years the genre has been visibly in decline...read more

Product Description: Takes a look at Victorian America, and explores the minds of Victorians by examining some of their most distinctive and fascinating creations. The five essays in the book discuss specific pieces - hallstands, sideboards, embroidered mottoes, parlor organs, and seating furniture - within the context of broader cultural issues and concerns...read more

Product Description: A useful bibliography on 21 specific aspects of decorative arts and household furnishings.

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Product Description: Essays expanding the definition of gender and its interface with American material culture. In showing some of the ways gender is made visible, they explore avenues such as the gender of things that surround us; subtle and invisible processes of inclusion and exclusion from valuation; fusing form and content, practice and product; and how the material culture of gender produces gendered beings...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)