Brock Jobe on Furniture Nov 12
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Brock Jobe2 furnitureMARK YOUR CALENDAR

The last lecture in the 2013 season of the Piscataquq Decorative Arts Society will be given by Brock Jobe, Professor of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum on November 12. The title of his lecture is “Venture Cargoes: The Marketing of New England Furniture Along the Atlantic Coast in the Eighteenth Century”.  (Continued below)

 

The lecture will be held in the Tyco Center at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH.  The talk starts at 5:30pm, preceded by refreshments at 5pm. The cost to the general public is $10, while members are free. 

Colonial consumers living along the Eastern seaboard had access to furniture from many locations. Certainly much of it was locally made or came from craftsmen within the region, but exports from Britain, Philadelphia, New York, and New England are well documented. This presentation will explore one aspect of the colonial craftsmen’s vibrant export trade: the marketing and shipment of New England-made goods throughout the 1700s. We often lose sight of how extensive a trade this was: furniture from Portsmouth, Salem, Boston, Newport and Providence made its way to customers located from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean and all ports of call in between. 

Brock Jobe has taught in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, assuming this role in October 2000. Before this his career included stints as curator of exhibition buildings at Colonial Williamsburg, Chief Curator at Historic New England, Research Assistant at the M.F.A., Boston, and Deputy Director for collection, conservation, and interpretation at Winterthur Museum. Brock has a number of publications to his name and is currently engaged in a collaborative project called “Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture”. He has just completed a conference and soon-to-be publication, which will result in six exhibitions in the Bay State. Please join us for a fresh look at the resourcefulness of New England furniture makers in search of markets and money. 

The Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society is a non-profit organization with a mission to promote original historical research resulting in publication. The primary focus is on the greater Piscataqua region of New Hampshire and Maine with connecting links to Massachusetts and beyond. For more information, check the web site (www.pdasociety.org)