Lloyd Goodrich, Three Centuries of American Art (New York: Praeger; London: Pall Mall Press, 1968, 66s.). Pp. 155; 130 illustrations (39 in colour). - Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900: A Critical History (New York: Praeger; London: Thames and Hudson, 1968, cloth, 35s. paper 21s). Pp. 320; 281 illustrations (37 in colour). - Theodore Sizer (with the assistance of Caroline Rollins), The Works of Colonel John Trumbull, Artist of the American Revolution (revised edition) (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967, 90s.). Pp. xxiii, 181, frontispiece in colour, and 276 illustrations. - Pauline A. Pinckney, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century, introduction by Jerry Bywaters (Austin: University of Texas Press; London, American University Publishers Group, 1968, 1435.). Pp. xx, 232; 129 illustrations (12 in colour). - Robert V. Hine, Bartlett's West: Drawing the Mexican Boundary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968, 112s. 6d.). Pp. xv, 155; 56 illustrations (16 in colour).

Eschibition Review:Exhibition catalog: Chrissie Iles, Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2016. 256pp.; 300 color and 100 b/w ills. Hardcover $65.00 (9780300221879) Exhibition schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, October 28, 2016–February 5, 2017

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A Dentist’s Chair: For Practicality, Comfort, or Spectacle?

Journal of Design History ◽

10.1093/jdh/epab005 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Olivia Armandroff

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

New York ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Material Culture ◽

American Art ◽

National Gallery ◽

Yale University ◽

Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

National Gallery Of Art

Abstract This essay focuses on a thirteen-inch-high reclining chair with a carved walnut frame, brass base, and emerald green velvet upholstery in the Winterthur Museum collection [1 and 2]. Created by Ira Salmon of Boston circa 1866, the chair is a patent model and part of Salmon’s efforts to win a professional reputation as a dentist early in his career. This essay documents the transformation of dentistry in America from an itinerant practice in the early republic to a professionalized career in the mid-nineteenth century. It offers evidence of how the material world of dentists changed when tools of the profession became standardized and mass produced. Developing technologies facilitated reclining chairs suited for newfangled operative techniques. The essay also focuses on a period that anticipates the development of germ theory in the early twentieth century and the sterilization of the dentist’s office. In this mid-nineteenth century moment, the aesthetics of dentist offices, and their chairs’ designs, bridge a divide between the traditional values associated with dentists and those ascribed to dentists today. The patent model demonstrates Salmon’s desire to appeal to his clients’ interest by capturing the dramatic potential of a dentist’s visit while satisfying their desire for comfort and expectation of skilful technique. Olivia Armandroff is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California. She works on early- to mid-twentieth-century American art. She holds a B.A. from Yale University in History and the History of Art where she wrote and later published a senior thesis on how the early-twentieth-century phenomenon for individualized bookplates. Before coming to USC, she was the John Wilmerding Intern for American Art at the National Gallery of Art and then earned an M.A. in American Material Culture from the Winterthur Program where her master’s thesis was dedicated to the early twentieth-century, New York salon of Muriel Draper. Olivia has curated exhibitions at the Yale University Art Gallery, Sterling Memorial Library, the Delaware Art Museum, and the American Swedish Historical Museum and has contributed to exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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