Overview

English joiner John Head (1688-1754) immigrated to Philadelphia in 1717 and became one of its most successful artisans and merchants. His prominence had been lost to history until the discovery of his account book at the Amer. Philosophical Soc. The earliest and most complete account book to have survived from any cabinetmaker working in Brit. North Amer. or in Great Britain, it records thousands of transactions over a 35-year period (1718-1753). This volume represents the definitive interpretation of the Head’s account book. Profusely illustrated and with a comprehensive general index, it is an essential reference work on 18th-cent. Phila., its furniture and material culture, and a detailed social history of that era’s artisans and merchants.

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9780871692719

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Reviews

""I suspect that historian Jay Robert Stiefel, author of this extraordinary book, knows more about head than the cabinetmaker himself knew. Stiefel has been analyzing and dissecting Head’s life and career for more than 20 years now. This magisterial publication is the culmination of hi work on Head and his account book, giving us a detailed, thorough, contextual, and sophisticated look at nearly everything that this important document reveals. Stiefel tells us much about Head’s life in particular, but also about the cabinetmaking trade and social history of life in Philadelphia during the first half of the 18th century."" -- Gerald W. R. Ward * Maine Antique Digest *

Author Information

Patrick Spero is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society. As a scholar of early American history, he specializes in the era of the American Revolution, and has published over a dozen essays and reviews on the topic. He is the author of Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765–1776 (Norton, 2018), and of Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania, and The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, both of which are available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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