Contents
Preface
Introduction
The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction?
Seduced by an Old Flame: Paradox and Illusion in a Late-
Twentieth-Century Lucite Lighter
In Vino Vanitas? Death and the Cellarette in Empire
New York
Reaching Out to Touch Someone? Reflections on a
1923 Candlestick Telephone
Sewing and Sowing: Cultural Continuity in an Amish Quilt
Unwrapping the bwat sekre: The Secrets of a Haitian
Money Box
The Many Figures of Eve: Styles of Womanhood Embodied
in a Late-Nineteenth-Century Corset
A Garden in the Machine: Reading a Mid-Nineteenth-Century,
Two-Cylinder Parlor Stove as Cultural Text
Lucubrations on a Lava Lamp: Technocracy, Counterculture,
and Containment in the American Sixties
Industry, Nature, and Identity in an Iron Footbridge
An Heirloom: Interpreting a Gilded Age Tortoiseshell Locket
The Foley Food Mill
The Light of the Home: Dialectics of Gender in an
Argand Lamp
Contributor Biographies
