New World Dutch Studies

Book excerpt: The art, archaeology, history, and lifeways of New Netherland come vividly to life in these essays by world experts on both sides of the Atlantic. The wide range of objects used and manufactured by Dutch settlers in the New World reveals much about their social life and times. Of particular interest in this volume are Fort Orange pipe bowls, ceramics, wooden cellars and other perishable structures, cupboards, the town house, farming techniques and equipment, plates, seals, rural architecture, canals, and the evidence of New Netherland life gleaned from paintings and the Knickerbocker works of Washington Irving. A companion to the widely praised Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776, this volume offers in-depth descriptions and analyses of Dutch colonial life and material culture, as assessed by the leading scholars in the Netherlands and the United States. Roderic H. Blackburn is an ethnologist and architectural historian who has held positions as Director of Research at Historic Cherry Hill, Assistant Director of the Albany Institute of History and Art, and Senior Research Fellow at the New York State Museum. He is the author of Dutch Colonial Homes in America, Great Houses of New England, and (with Ruth Piwonka) Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776. Nancy A. Kelly is an Associate Museum Exhibit Planner at the New York State Museum.