For this week, please respond to either: Bridget Heneghan, “The Pot Calling the Kettle: White Goods and the Construction of Race in Antebellum America,” Whitewashing America: Material Culture and Race in the Antebellum Imagination (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 3-43 ; or Jonathan Prown, “The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation,” Winterthur Portfolio 33, 4 (1998): 215-230.
Whichever article you choose, please be sure to comment about how the author uses material culture to explore questions of race. Try to consider the BIG issues that each author asks and answers in the articles.
5 comments:
The article that I found most interesting this week was The Furniture of Thomas Day written by Jonathan Prown. My first opinion of this was that it wouldn't discuss anything profound about race and material culture that hasn't been said before. I will admit that I was wrong about this. The biographical information on Thomas Day and how he got his career started in North Carolina is quite astounding.
I didn't know as a free man you could in some fashion own slaves. In fact that was a major shock to me since that type of information no one really talks about in history courses. Obviously through his furniture Thomas Day reached the hearts of white society during his time because how else could you explain the fair treatment. Sure North Carolina had a lesser race restriction than most states but that doesn't stray away from the fact that it is still the south.
It is really something to see when a lesser known furniture maker in a time where race was considerably everything, how Day was able to push past that. Day poured his heart and soul into his craft from his beginnings in Virginia to his days in North Carolina. A lot of that could be attributed to his mother whom made sure that he was properly schooled growing up. My big question that I want to ask is where does history hide all of this information? I'm sure there are others just like Day who despite a different race was able to have full control over thier lives.
The article that I found most interesting this week was The Furniture of Thomas Day written by Jonathan Prown. I really enjoyed to learn more about who Day was and what background was tied into it.
Like Qaaim said I did not know that he owned slaves. this was also a shock because in history they totally leave that part out you don't tend to hear about free black men owning their own slaves. I found it interesting that spite all of Days successes during the close of the antebellum era even Day was subjected to the same kind of hardships and setbacks as everyone else. you would think being a well known furniture maker and ones that better off than most wouldn't have faced the same but no.
I enjoyed mostly I think the questions that arose about "how African" are these pieces that Day makes. In the end it talked about the design of the newel post from the Paschal House in Milton (Fig 16) and how this suggests parts of the body in profile, were close akin to those carved statues from West Africa. I just found it really interesting that they were trying so hard to say his work is African when here it could have been influences from multiple people working on this project. I really think the last couple sentences state it well. "the notable material culture legacy of Day reveals the pressing need for creative but well-informed interpretations of what it means to be African American and how this differs from or parallels what it means to be American. About Day himself, what we may well find is that he is distinctly African American in many of his ideas and creative expressions but also unmistakably American in his cross-cultural character and his relentless search for individual success."
In "White Goods and the Construction of Race," Bridget Heneghan explores race through the practice of "whitening" of material goods in nineteenth century America. She cites examples in ceramics, as white plantation owners used increasingly whitened dining ware; excavations of slaves' quarters turned up wares made from more rustic materials, wood or earthenware.
Another area which whites used to foster their developing ideas about race was grave plots. Heneghan states that, if a slave's grave was marked in any way at all, it was often a contribution from family or from plantation owner, in memory of a favored servant. In the latter case, elaborate graves were constructed and inscribed as white graves. However, the inscriptions often spoke of the virtues of the deceased in terms of "the master's benevolent influence." In this light the entire grave site becomes more of a tribute to the master's ability to see just far enough beyond color to memorialize their own altruism. This practice seems nearly comical, causing one to ponder: whom, in a time when slavery was commonly accepted practice, and when racism was prevalent, were they trying to cajole?
The most interesting part of this article for me was the whitening of the plantation property itself. Seeming a mostly psychological approach to achieving their means, whites strategically positioned their slaves' quarters behind their homes. Heneghan states that this not only satisfied whites' desire to distance what they considered to be unsightly visible physical labor from their pristine homes, but also allowed them to associate their slaves with this labor. In this way a white plantation owner could cite the labor itself as the reason for this shuffling of property, and not any qualms with the actual issue of race.
Eric Easterday
I am going to have to elaborate and disagree on some points with you guys about the Thomas Day article. It seemed to me that yes, Thomas Day was a very fortunate man for not living a life of slavery, but it seems from all the research that Prown did he for the most part had it pretty easy.
With the excptions of a few set backs which i dont think are minor by any means, he came off to me as haveing very little African heritage. Now i said African not African American. Prown talked about African Americans adopting while heritage and makeing it there own. It seems to me that that was what Day was doing with his work. The article even talked about simularties with contempoary furniture made by white designers.
Without being from Africa and im pretty sure never going to Africa, this just becomes a common case of nature over nurture. He was African American by birth but his culture i believe was entirely different in the sense that he was a free black man living in a time where slavery was still a common practice. He is going to have radically different cultural influences then some of the african art the article related his work to. I see the similarities but i think its somewhat of a stretch to compare the two.
There were two things that sat wrong with me in the article. The first was when Prown talked about how we need to judge African art different then we judge dectorive art. It almost sounds like he is saying dectorive art is a bad thing. I think African art is very beautiful but i do not see how we can view it as anything more then dectorive art. The second was that Day had slaves. I do not know the context by which he obtained these slaves but it comes across like he had no compassion for the issue of slavery.
The story of Thomas Day strikes me as something more conversationally controversial in this blog.
Legally Thomas Days life was relatively non-problematic. His mother's possibly may have been a "difficult" story, assuming her freedom was not as easily attained, if so... someone in her family did fight for it.
Growing up knowing that you were equal, legally by the government birth right legal, and being initially treated differently must have created a drive to be a little bit better. Assuredly Day encountered prejudice daily if he were to step outside of his geological element, away from people he knew, his friends. Peers may not have made Days life so easy, and we are all social creatures.
But I agree that his artistic heritage may have been more-so African American than African, and could possibly be early "folk" driven aesthetic.
Day was good at what he did and I believe thats how he stayed up with his game. People liked his stuff and he often traded it for "approval" such as the marriage of his wife and the family sitting on the white side.
His slaves were more-so apprentices and were returned to their masters upon the learnedness of the trade. And i could see how hanging out with Day rather than on the plantation may have been more enjoyable whether you were called "slave" or "apprentice"
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