The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

Book Description

The mid-Atlantic region is fortunate to have an abundance of houses and buildings that date to the eighteenth century. Fine examples of the furniture, paintings, and other objects that filled these houses survive in museums and private collections. But what of the gardens that surrounded these early homes? Virtually all of them have been reclaimed by wilderness or altered by later residents.

In Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, Barbara Wells Sarudy recovers this lost world using a remarkable variety of sources -- historic maps, travelers' accounts, diaries, paintings (some on the backs of Baltimore painted chairs), account ledgers, catalogues, and newspaper advertisements. She offers an engaging account of the region's earliest gardens, introducing us to the people who designed and tended these often elaborate landscapes and explaining the forces and finances behind their creation.

Many of Sarudy's stories concern the gentry and their great estates. She tells of Charles Carroll of Annapolis, who spent the 1770s fretting about revolutionary politics and designing geometric landscapes for his home -- and who died in 1783, the result of a fall in his beloved garden. She describes Charles Ridgely's terraced garden at Hampton, one of more than seventy geometric gardens that dotted the hills around Baltimore in the 1800s. And she recalls Rosalie Stier Calvert's quest for beauty and utility in her garden at Riversdale, where at great expense she ordered the installation of an ornamental lake to improve the view while also providing ice for the kitchen and fish for the table.

Beyond the gentry, Sarudy tells the less familiar stories of the gardeners, laborers, nurserymen, and seed dealers whose skills and efforts transformed the Chesapeake landscape. In Virginia, royal gardeners arrived from England to maintain the grounds of the Governor's Palace and the College of William and Mary. In Maryland, the Jesuits paid independent garden contractors to maintain their kitchen and medicinal-botanical gardens. Most Chesapeake gardeners, of course, relied on indentured servants or slaves to install and maintain their gardens -- or did the work themselves -- and Sarudy tells their stories, as well.

Throughout, she relates gardens and gardening to the larger forces that lay behind them. During the Revolution, for example, attempts to demonstrate republican simplicity and independence helped to create a distinctly American garden style. William Faris, an Annapolis watchmaker and innkeeper, went so far as to describe his improved varieties of tulips as symbols of the new nation -- and took particular pride in naming them to honor national heroes such as President Washington.

From the favorite books of early gardeners to the republican balance between table and ornamental gardens, Sarudy includes details that give us an unprecedented understanding of Chesapeake gardening from settlement through the early national period. Her postscript describes the ultimate fate of the region's eighteenth century gardens -- some of which survive (in more or less authentic form) and can still be visited and enjoyed.

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The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg

The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg
M. Kent Brinkley , Gordon W. Chappell , and Kent M. Brinkley
Manufacturer: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0879351586

Product Description

The authors present the history of gardening on twenty Colonial Williamsburg sites, focusing on the eighteenth-century gardeners who planted them and the documentary and archaeological research that guided each garden's re-creation. Detailed plans and captivating photographs identify the plantings and show modern gardeners ways to enjoy the beauty of colonial gardens in their own yards

Customer Reviews:

The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg.......2001-08-02

The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg is a most inspiring and beautiful book covering the four seasons in Colonial Williamsburg. This book covers not only the history of twenty gardens in the historic district, but who these eighteenth century garders were. The archaeological research provides a detailed look at each of the gardens, giving layout plans and detailed list of all the plants used. With the addition of beautiful color photography, this book will provide all gardeners with a source to re-create a eighteenth century garden.

Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden

Average customer rating:

An excellent book
Best book my mom ever wrote

Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden
Lucile H. Brockway
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

This widely acclaimed book analyzes the political effects of scientific research as exemplified by one field, economic botany, during one epoch, the nineteenth century, when Great Britain was the world's most powerful nation. Lucile Brockway examines how the British botanic garden network developed and transferred economically important plants to different parts of the world to promote the prosperity of the Empire.

In this classic work, available once again after many years out of print, Brockway examines in detail three cases in which British scientists transferred important crop plants -- cinchona (a source of quinine), rubber and sisal -- to new continents. Weaving together botanical, historical, economic, political and ethnographic findings, the author illuminates the remarkable social role of botany and the entwined relation between science and politics in an imperial era.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent book.......2004-09-04

This is an excellent book, very easy to read and covering the colonial economic botany (rubber, quinin, sisal) in a true apealing way.

Best book my mom ever wrote.......1997-07-31

The author was my mother. The book, based on her anthropology thesis, applied anthropological concepts to the sweeping GLOBAL influence and changes of Western colonization using the British empire as the model. Its a ground breaking book, easy and interesting to read (don't mind the implicit occasional politics). "The best part" (that's an inside family joke) is learning about the relationship between colonial expansion, Kew Gardens, rubber plantations, malaria, chinchona (sp?) and Gin and Tonics. I actually typed an early version of this chapter and couldn't have been happier with the content

A Wild Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun

Average customer rating:

Interesting - one nun's life in Mexico some 300 years ago

A Wild Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun
Maria De San Jose
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863

ASIN: 0253335817

Book Description

Madre Maria de San Jose (1656-1719)--mystic, chronicler, and co-founder of an Augustinian convent-- inscribed her life story within the model of spiritual autobiography set by St. Augustine and Teresa of Avila, but at the same time included her individual story as a seventeenth-century woman of the landowning classes in New Spain. The resulting manuscript records in intimate detail her family life, convent surroundings, and social milieu; it introduces us to a combative and engaging person and gives us a rare and vivid glimpse of a complex society.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting - one nun's life in Mexico some 300 years ago.......2001-08-24

Madre Maria de San Jose was a relatively uneducated women who spent 21 years waiting to enter a convent. She wrote of her family and convent life at the request of her confessors, and gives us a close look at what life in Mexico during the late 1600s and early 1700s was like for her. These are not the translations of her complete journals - there were 12 volumes - but, rather, selections from her writings. The selections give the reader a panoramic view of Madre Maria's life. The journal entries can be a bit slow-going at times, mostly because of the writing style that Maria used. And the writing style would seem to be typical for many who wrote these types of journals. I found the section "Studies of Maria de San Jose's Life and Text" to be much easier to read, and somewhat more interesting. This section gives us more historical information about her life, her family, and what convent life was like at the time that Madre Maria lived.

From A Colonial Garden: Ideas, Decorations, Recipes

Average customer rating:

Rates a place on the bookshelf
Entertaining with a 'Colonial' Flair
Welcome to Spring

From A Colonial Garden: Ideas, Decorations, Recipes
Susan Hight Rountree
Manufacturer: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Flower Arranging | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0879352124

Product Description

Colonial Williamsburg's renowned gardens have always played a major role in the life of the town. Their beauty and bounty inspired From a Colonial Garden. The author harvests a wealth of clearly written and illustrated entertaining and decorating how-to's and recipes from these famous gardens. From a Colonial Garden, with its myriad of ideas, deserves a special place on the bookshelf of any host, hostess, or gardener

Customer Reviews:

Rates a place on the bookshelf.......2004-03-27

Colonial Williamsburg... sets a high standard for illustrated books on gardens, the Colonial kitchen, and the decorative arts in the occasional books it publishes.

The latest from CW's presses is Susan Hight Rountree's "From a Colonial Garden: Ideas, Decorations, Recipes" ($24.95). The first section introduces the reader to the formal but colorful gardens visitors can admire in the restored area -- but these gardens also serve a practical purpose as succeeding sections attest...

The book is strong on weddings, offering a winter reception at the Williamsburg Inn or a summer ceremony at a James River plantation. Ms. Rountree... also uses garden materials to make gifts, wreaths, table decorations, and other items throughout the year. The section on Christmas is especially useful, and readers will want to remember to consult the book in early November, before the holidays, for fresh ideas.

This not primarily a cookbook, but Ms. Rountree includes recipes for seasonal dishes to round out her sections... As with all CW publications, this new book upholds the benchmarks of taste and style readers have learned to expect, and will rate a place on the bookshelf of gardener, cook, and home decorator.

-Ann Lloyd Merriman, editor, commentary/books
"Between the Bookends," Richmond Times Dispatch

Entertaining with a 'Colonial' Flair.......2004-03-15

The newest entertaining and decorating book from Colonial Williamsburg combines touches of elegance with moments of fun and fantasy.

The 212-page book, "From A Colonial Garden: Ideas, Decorations, Recipes" is divided into chapters that take you through the seasons and many special occasions such as weddings, bridal showers and rehearsal dinners. There are 287 color photos and 24 illustrations to guide you every step of the way.

Best of all, most of the projects are simple to create... For example, veggies such as colorful peppers are used to create a zesty-looking centerpiece on the nail-studded wooden cone that's typically covered with apples and sprigs of boxwood...

One of her easiest and sunniest table arrangements is perfect for a summer picnic or cookout. A partially hollowed-out watermelon serves as a container for a bouquet of zinnias, rudbeckia, coreopsis, apple mint and rosemary...

Rountree says the chapters on ideas from the spring garden are her favorite sections because they encourage you to use so many fresh flowers. "I'd like to see more people doing that," she says. "Fresh flowers are so many places these days--in the markets or you can grow your own."

A chapter on garnishes from the spring garden also features Rountree's garden pet--the Cheshire Cheese Hedgehog... English folklore says it's a sign of good luck when you find a hedgehog in your garden. The book features an easy cheese-based recipe for making the hedgehog. "I've had such fun with him, he'll be in every book," she says.

--Kathy Van Mullekom, Daily Press
Newport News, VA

Welcome to Spring.......2004-03-04

How charmingly and seamlessly does Susan Hight Rountree translate 18th-century entertaining style into the 21st century! This delightful addition to her past best-sellers will be enjoyed by not only professional designers but talent-challenged amateurs like myself who need guidance as we try to duplicate the classic Williamsburg look. The "how-to" directions are clear and the beautiful illustrations are lavish, promising success with all the enticing projects--family celebrations, garden parties, weddings, gifts and holiday decorations. A wonderful complement to every decorating library!

Average customer rating:

Makes a Great Gift
Perfect gift!
I love boxwood
Has a lot of good ideas.

Christmas Decorations from Williamsburg
Susan Hight Rountree
Manufacturer: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Decorative Arts | Design & Decorative Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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Christmas & Hanukkah | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0879350857

Product Description

Superb photography, descriptive text, and twenty-seven charming color drawings present ideas and how-to's for creating wreaths, cones, swags, roping, and other holiday decorations for mantels, stairways, windows, and tables. Fresh and dried plant materials are used separately or are combined in both traditional and more contemporary ways to help you create a Williamsburg Christmas in your home

Customer Reviews:

Makes a Great Gift.......2007-04-04

Creative projects for homemade Christmas decorations make this book a great gift.. If you can part with it!

Perfect gift!.......2007-01-18

I bought this book for my neighbor and when it came I wanted to keep it! She had recently visited Williamsburg and came back with stories of how she loved the Christmas decorating and wanted to emulate things for her own home.
I've never been to Williamsburg myself, but this book was beautiful! The pictures were professional (I've seen books where they were not) and there were instructions on how to make the decor yourself. Well worth it! I will probaly get one for myself for next season!

I love boxwood.......2006-10-14

Since I love boxwood growing in the yard and using the beautiful greens at Christmas, I found this book to be one of the most informative books I own about Christmas greens. The instructions on how to create many decorations for the inside and outside the home are very clear. The pictures are gorgeous. I have learned to make garlands, wreaths, centerpieces, swags, boxwood trees, and other lovely items. The book features many different types of greens to use for creating holiday decorations. I have taught many others how to make holiday decorations that are featured in this book.

Has a lot of good ideas........1999-01-24

This book has lovely ideas for decoarting using natural materials. I found many of the ideas could be done very inexpensively.

Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the "Improvement" of the World

Average customer rating:

Important history.
A brilliant history book
A Model of Scholarship!
Richard Drayton's Thrilling Read

Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the "Improvement" of the World
Richard Drayton
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300059760

Book Description

Nature's Government is a daring attempt to juxtapose the histories of Britain, western science, and imperialism. It shows how colonial expansion, from the age of Alexander the Great to the twentieth century, led to more complex kinds of knowledge. Science, and botany in particular, was fed by information culled from the exploration of the globe. At the same time science was useful to imperialism: it guided the exploitation of exotic environments and made conquest seem necessary, legitimate and beneficial. Richard Drayton traces the history of this idea of 'improvement', from its Christian agrarian origins in the sixteenth century to its inclusion in theories of enlightened despotism. It was as providers of legitimacy, as much as of universal knowledge, aesthetic perfection, and agricultural plenty, he argues, that botanic gardens became instruments of government, first in Continental Europe, and by the late eighteenth century, in Britain and the British Empire. At the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the rise of which throughout the nineteenth century is a central theme of this book, a pioneering scientific institution was added to a spectacular ornamental garden. At Kew, 'improving' the world became a potent argument for both the patronage of science at home and Britain's prerogatives abroad. Nature's Government provides a portrait of how the ambitions of the Enlightenment shaped the great age of British power, and how empire changed the British experience and the modern world.

Customer Reviews:

Important history........2002-08-01

Drayton's main point is to show the inter-relatedness of imperial control over nature and people. Natural sciences and political economy became related. That is, an understanding of nature's laws would help improve the administration of people and things/environment. Botany facilitated improvement ["a commitment to the reform of the world as a whole" p. 104], and improvement by the state justified empire.

He seeks to show this by concentration on Kew as a place where science and expansion converged (even while sitting at the very heart of the center. "What matters is Kew as an agent and product of modern history, as a space in which ideas about nature, economy, and legitimate authority interacted with concrete policies over Imperial Britain's nineteenth century." p. xvii. "From the 1780s onwards, however, it became a de facto national collection, to which seeds and bulbs were sent from every part of the world. More strikingly, Kew became a source of plants, and of gardeners, sent outwards to Britain's overseas dominions." p. 108.

He offers this summary: "Botanical knowledge, linked to the global transit of exotic commodities, had come to symbolize an imperium both rational and divine." p. 25.

"Systems of classification, as much as sextants and chronometers, allowed Europeans to perceive themselves as the magistrates of Providence, equipped by their knowledge of its laws with responsibilities over all of creation." p. 45. This knowledge justified their dominion. "British `improvers' moved, at home and abroad, in the faith that they ultimately knew better than those on the ground. Their confidence depended, in part, on the assumption that they possessed a more profound understanding of how Nature worked." p. 90.

Drayton wants to upset the idea of imperialism being simply the center imposing itself on the periphery, rather: "Over all, we should begin to conceive of European `expansion' as the colonization of Europe by extra-European interests." p. xviii The periphery changed the culture at the center: "Tropical nature [and its defiance of categories framed by the likes of Linnaeus] had again overthrown a system too provincial in its dependence on Europe..." p. 19.

Having superior knowledge justified exploitation of foreign lands despite natives, but it also justified conserving resources despite native demands when it suited the empire. These points are Drayton's most interesting for me (I could have used a lot more thinking about this-perhaps at the expense of stuff on personal politics in and around Kew).

Drayton insists botany pave the way for empire in a number of ways: knowledge and expertise lent legitimacy to foreign intervention (the enlightened know best), botanists themselves were local agents of empire, and knowledge allowed for redistribution of plants for profit in the center and around the imperial periphery.

A brilliant history book.......2002-04-11

This is one of the most exciting books I have ever read. It connects so many different strands of intellectual history, British history, and world history into one elegantly organized story which works over four centuries. It is packed with original arguments and suggestions-- almost too many, at times it is difficult to keep track of all the arguments that are in play at the same time. Drayton has a gift for keeping lots of balls in the air. It is the kind of book which leaves you feeling smarter in a dozen kinds of ways. I thought the conclusion was pretty prophetic about the world of 9-11.

A Model of Scholarship!.......2002-01-24

Drayton has penned a remarkable history and historical sociology of the planting of empire, science and of course, plants. A remarkable achievment, complemented by the high quality of production by Yale University Press. Highly recommended, even to those who might believe that they have no interest in either science or empire...deserves more than five stars!

Richard Drayton's Thrilling Read.......2000-09-06

Well, let's hope this is the first of many magisterial tomes from the pen of one of the brightest new stars of academe. Richard Drayton, a man who combines the wit of Mark Twain with the intellectual force of Aristotle, has produced a thrilling read that - like the writing of the great Alan Titchmarsh - reshapes the landscape of imperial history. Tremendous vistas. Striking and unexpected historical contrasts. I recommend it strongly.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens,

Average customer rating:

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens,
Frances, Phipps
Manufacturer: E P Dutton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0801514347

Colonial Williamsburg Decorates for Christmas: Step-By-Step Illustrated Instructions for Christmas Decorations That You Can Make for Your Home

Average customer rating:

Lovely, Natural Christmas Decorations
Excellent presentation and accompanying text.

Colonial Williamsburg Decorates for Christmas: Step-By-Step Illustrated Instructions for Christmas Decorations That You Can Make for Your Home
Libby H. Oliver , Betty Babb , Elizabeth Booth , Betsy Kent , and M. Marquardt
Manufacturer: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Christmas & Hanukkah | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

Flower Arranging | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Decorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 087935058X

Product Description

Colonial Williamsburg is famous for the wreaths and other exterior and interior decorations that adorn its houses, shops, and exhibition buildings at Yuletide. This how-to book contains directions for making forty-two beautiful decorations including an apple cone and an herb wreath. Step-by-step drawings and thirty-five color photographs show how to create each decoration at home

Customer Reviews:

Lovely, Natural Christmas Decorations.......2004-11-22

I've used this book over and over to decorate my home at Christmas with Southern style arrangements. Demonstrating these techniques for garden clubs and at libraries, I always found a ready audience for this and it was really easy. I learned it all from this book.
The supplies are easy to gather (pinecones, apples, oranges, holly, greenery, wire, ribbon, etc.). The results are spectacular. Your arrangements will look very professional!
Each page shows four or more drawings showing the steps for attaching the pieces to make a different decoration. It shows various wreaths, table decorations, swags, roping, corner accents for doors, mantel decorations and an herb kissing ball.
If you ever visited Williamsburg at Christmas, you will want to recreate these beautiful arrangements in your home. This website gives you an idea of the variety you can create:
http://www.history.org/christmas/dec_doors.html

Excellent presentation and accompanying text........1999-07-23

I have seen this book at the publisher's and it is outstanding. The photographs are exceptional and the descriptions well composed and pertinent. You have, however, left out the name of the CO-AUTHOR, Mary Miley Theobald. I hope you will correct this as both professionals worked long and hard to assemble the edition.

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