Mahogany : the costs of luxury in early America / Jennifer L. Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, Jennifer L., 1966-

Botanic Gardens (Singapore)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mahogany industry--United States--History--18th century.

Mahogany industry.

Mahogany--United States--History--18th century.

Mahogany.

United States--Social life and customs--To 1775.

United States.

United States--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Genre:

Records and correspondence

Physical Description:

1 online resource (424 p.)

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2012.

1886-1903 1886 1903

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation. Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled "huntsmen" who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the nation's past. Jennifer Anderson offers a dynamic portrait of the many players, locales, and motivations that drove the voracious quest for mahogany to adorn American parlors and dining rooms. This complex story reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental costs of America's growing self-confidence and prosperity, and how desire shaped not just people's lives but the natural world.

Contents:

A new species of elegance

The gold standard of Jamaican mahogany

Supplying the Empire

The bitters and the sweets of trade

Slavery in the rainforest

Redefining mahogany in the Early Republic

Mastering nature and the challenge of mahogany

Democratizing mahogany and the advent of steam

An old species of elegance.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674067264

0674067266

OCLC:

835788747