by Edwin Tunis. Softbound, 155 pages, 8” x 11”. In this superb book, the author vividly reconstructs the vanished ways of colonial America’s skilled craftsmen. With incomparable wit and learning, and in over 450 meticulous drawings, the artist-author describes the skills, technologies, workshops, town and country trades, and individual and group enterprises by which early Americans forged an economy in the New World. The first craftsmen set up their trades in coastal settlements, which often sprang up around a mill or near a tanyard. Blacksmiths, coopers, joiners, weavers, cordwainers, housewrights, and their assistants invented their own tools and devised their own methods for using them. Soon they were making products that far surpassed their Old World models: the colonial axe was so popular that English ironmongers often labeled theirs “American” to sell them more readily. In a thriving town square a colonist could have his bread baked to order, wig curled, eyeglasses ground, and medicinal prescription filled. With increased trade in “bespoke” or made-to-order work, fine American styles evolved, many of them now priceless heirlooms—the silverware of Paul Revere and John Coney, redware and Queensware pottery, Poyntell hand-blocked wallpaperTunis describes the development of the Kentucky rifle, Conestoga wagon, and iron grillework that still graces houses in some parts of the South. He also shows how colonial trade formed the basis for important modern industries like papermaking,glassmaking, shipbuilding, printing, and metalworking. In many cases, Tunis’s own careful research reconstructs the complex equipment that served these enterprises
