Relic furniture in Victorian America
Date
1993
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This paper examines America's nineteenth-century fascination with relic furniture. It attempts to identify the motivating forces behind this fascination, and to determine what Victorian American values and desires were reflected by the relic objects created during this time. ☐ Research focused on nineteenth-century diaries, letters, magazine articles, and other documents containing references to relic objects of the period. In an attempt to understand the psychological forces underlying the potency of relic objects, modern psychological analyses of the importance of myth, religion, place, and memory were also explored. ☐ In the minds of Victorian Americans, relics -- imbued with potency associated with past people, places, and events -- survived as tangible proof of people and events that played vital roles in America's history. The relic objects they created and preserved provided nineteenth-century Americans with material evidence of their country's origins, and helped them confirm their own place within America's historical context.