The true character of Americans is mirrored in their homes. . - Antiques - book review

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2002

Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery, Voyage aux Etats-Unis de l'Amerique, 1793-1798

Such insights about Americans as this have come most often from outsiders. Half a century after Moreau de Saint-Mery's visit, the Swedish author Fredrika Bremer came to the United States "to observe the popular life, institutions, and circumstances of a new country." In her travels from New England to Florida she met prominent politicians, authors, businessmen, and artists and she avidly followed the important issues of the day However, she believed that it was from the "threshold of the home" that one could best view "the future of humanity," so American homes became the primary focus of her attention. The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, the book in which she set down her experiences as a traveler in the United States, was an immediate success when it was translated from Swedish by Mary Howitt and published in New York City in 1853.

The early colonists applied their ingenuity and craftsmanship to fulfilling their immediate needs. First they were involved in the conquest of a new land, then in the establishment of a new government. Simultaneously, they were building houses and public buildings and fitting them out with furniture and other necessities for living. That these activities were considered too important to be left to chance is illustrated by the advice of Gouverneur Morris to President George Washington in a letter of January 1790: "I think it of very great importance to fix the taste of our country properly, and I think your example will go very far in that respect. It is therefore my wish that everything about you should be substantially good and majestically plain, made to endure." Consequently restrained ornamentation and emphasis on line and proportion are the Keynotes of American craftsmanship.

In New England, the middle colonies, and the South materials and requirements were different and, as might be expected, architecture and furniture were correspondingly different. Nonetheless, it was to Britain that American artisans looked for inspiration. The surge in the size of the middle class on both sides of the Atlantic had a profound influence on the development of a common culture in the eighteenth century. By mid-century the five major seaports--Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston--possessed a class of commercial gentry that was also growing fast in size and prosperity. It was a class rich enough to indulge in conspicuous consumption, with the leisure to read, watch plays, listen to concerts, and embellish their houses.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote in 1752 that "the spirit of the age affects all the arts; and the minds of men, being once roused from their lethargy and put into a fermentation, turn themselves on all sides, and carry improvements into every art and science....Thus industry knowledge, and humanity, are linked together in an indissoluble chain." Politics and society the arts and the sciences were inextricably linked.

It was in this spirit that Henry Francis du Pont--art connoisseur, horticulturist, and eminent cattle breeder--opened his 175-room house, Winterthur, to the public as a museum half a century ago. His intention was that its unrivaled collection of American decorative arts and period rooms should mirror "the true character of Americans." Ruth Lord, du Pont's youngest daughter in her recent biography of her father, relates that when the museum opened and Charles F. Montgomery suggested "with trepidation that the Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware collaborate to create a graduate program in American arts and cultural history, my father literally clapped his hands and said, 'Obviously we have to do it!"' This brings to mind these lines from Virgil's Aeneid (1. 607): "As long as rivers shall run down to the sea, or shadows touch the mountain slopes, or stars graze in the vault of heaven, so long shall your honor, your name, your praises endure."

Wendell Garrett