Colonial Craftsmen and the Beginning of American Industry

By Edwin Tunis

In this wonderful book full of wit and learning and over 450 meticulous drawings, the author-artist vividly reconstructs the vanished ways of colonial America’s skilled craftsmen. He describes the skills, technologies, and individual group enterprises by which early Americans forged an economy in the New World. Tunis illuminates the trades and tools of the earliest craftsmen—blacksmiths, coopers, joiners, weavers, cordwainers, housewrights—describing how, with increased trade in “bespoke” work (silverware, pottery, wallpaper) fine American styles evolved. Included is the development of the Kentucky rifle, the Conestoga wagon and southern iron grillwork, as well as important modern industries like papermaking, glassmaking, shipbuilding, printing and metalworking. A companion to Diderot’s Encyclopedia, this book recovers and records old ways, often lost.

159 pages. 8-1/2 x 11. Illustrated throughout with line drawings. Soft cover. $20.95. (1999) ISBN 0801862280