A01=K. L. H. Wells
archival sources
Author_K. L. H. Wells
Category=AB
Category=AFT
Category=AGA
Category=AMG
Category=AMX
Category=GLZ
Category=JBCC1
colonial america
colonial revival
colonial williamsburg
domestic environment
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
index of american design
midcentury america
postwar
race
thorne rooms
tourism
watercolor
white nationalist identity
winterthur
Product details
- ISBN 9780300282719
- Dimensions: 203 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 14 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
An examination of how immersive colonial revival projects contributed to the formation of a White nationalist identity by inviting viewers to step into the past
From 1930 to 1950, a number of design projects in the United States appeared to bring early American history to life. Sites and artworks such as Colonial Williamsburg, the Winterthur Museum, the Index of American Design, and Narcissa Niblack Thorne’s miniature period rooms created immersive fantasies of the past in which visitors seemed to have direct contact with the look and feel of history. Accessible and entertaining for general audiences, these popular projects also had the unsettling effect of naturalizing political ideologies of racial inequality.
K. L. H. Wells examines the ways that colonial revival design produced new racial identifications in which the nation’s European immigrant communities and “old stock” Americans transformed from being seen as individual groups differentiated by region, ethnicity, and class to a White race with shared ties to early American history. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of archival sources—including letters from designers and audiences, working drawings and documentary photographs, government and corporate reports, magazine articles and newspaper reviews, and exhibition catalogues and guidebooks—Wells offers a revelatory look at how the affective dimensions of visual and material cultures in colonial revival design contributed to the making of twentieth-century American whiteness.
From 1930 to 1950, a number of design projects in the United States appeared to bring early American history to life. Sites and artworks such as Colonial Williamsburg, the Winterthur Museum, the Index of American Design, and Narcissa Niblack Thorne’s miniature period rooms created immersive fantasies of the past in which visitors seemed to have direct contact with the look and feel of history. Accessible and entertaining for general audiences, these popular projects also had the unsettling effect of naturalizing political ideologies of racial inequality.
K. L. H. Wells examines the ways that colonial revival design produced new racial identifications in which the nation’s European immigrant communities and “old stock” Americans transformed from being seen as individual groups differentiated by region, ethnicity, and class to a White race with shared ties to early American history. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of archival sources—including letters from designers and audiences, working drawings and documentary photographs, government and corporate reports, magazine articles and newspaper reviews, and exhibition catalogues and guidebooks—Wells offers a revelatory look at how the affective dimensions of visual and material cultures in colonial revival design contributed to the making of twentieth-century American whiteness.
K. L. H. Wells is associate professor of American art and architecture in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
