ERIC SLOANE
Eric Sloane (1905-1985), the great American artist and preservationist of early American material culture, was a profound influence on me. As a lad I became fascinated with tools and their meaning (both practical and philosophical) to the men and women and children who used them, created them, adapted them, and respected them from the colonial days to the days of mass reproduction and imports. Reading Sloane and studying his illustrations made me forever interested in local history, small-scale and regional and personal. We carry anything of his that is in print, hardcover and paperback when we can get it, and I recommend it all highly.
Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805
Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805
This reprint of an actual early-nineteenth-century diary provides today's readers with a delightful rarity. Eric Sloane has taken a fifteen-year-old farm boy's brief, concise notebook and expanded the daily entries with explanatory narrative and his own remarkable drawings. As a result, he has preserved the simplicity and charm of a bygone era. A fascinating guide to past life and customs in rural New England, the book includes verbal and graphic sketches detailing the construction of an entire backwoods farm.