Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Primary Research                                                                          

You are to undertake research in the field of furniture history. In particular, you are to seek out a primary text on the subject (for example, Thomas Sheraton’s furniture catalogue, published in London in 1803, is such a text as would be John Stalker and George Parker’s 1688 work A Treatise on Japanning and Varnishing).and you are to write an essay that considers the purpose of the document, the circumstances of its publication and its significance.  The task here is to find a primary text and assess its meanings, historical and critical.  You are required to provide a printed/digital retrieved copy of the text. Bibliographic citations are expected. 

ps: we will know from your reading of the lecture notes and your viewing of the slides the importance of what are called primary sources in the study of history.  We have looked at early texts including the Roman Vitruvius’s writings on architecture, for example, Hugues Sambin publication on the carving of human forms on the pilasters of case goods and George Hepplewhite’s catalog of neo-classical revival forms in furniture in England in the 1790s.  Each one of these texts is significant because they were created in the past and therefore constitute a contemporary voice (meaning contemporary at the time).  Primary texts provide first-hand information about societies and peoples, about insights into the conditions of society: ideas about making, form, materials, aesthetics and so on. 



A primary text is different from a secondary text in two ways: one it is a living document from the past and two, it therefore requires the careful consideration of what it says, in what context and to what end.  A secondary text is a synthesis of a period in time that will likely use primary texts.  For example, a history of Thomas Chippendale would appropriately look at his published catalog along with other sources, some old and from the time and perhaps more recent works of scholarship.  When a historian uses primary texts in the making of their argument, they do so having immersed themselves in the culture of the period so that the words and images contained in primary sources can be understood as well as possible.



Your task for this assignment is to look for a primary text.  They abound and take many forms: diaries, catalogues, government reports, memoirs, advertisements and so on.  When you find your text, you are to undertake a close reading of it.  A close reading mean you need to read it carefully and thoroughly.  You need to ‘get inside’ the mind of the author and figure out the reasons why the text was written and what it set out to do.  Hepplewhite wanted to advertise his work because he was both an artist and in business.  In order to understand the text, you will need to do research into the period of its creation.  To find a text, you could start with the names of furniture makers or manufacturers or you could look for publications such as magazines that profiled objects by designers.  The goal is for you to look into the print culture of a period for the purposes of doing research in furniture history.