| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Stanford White: Decorator in Opulence and Dealer in Antiquities. By Wayne Craven. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xviii, 264 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-231-13344-8.)
Wayne Craven has a justified position in the field of American decorative arts. He has published, among other works, Sculpture in America (1968; 1984), Colonial American Portraiture (1986), and American Art (1994). Craven, currently the H. F. du Pont Professor of Art History, Emeritus, at the University of Delaware, has impeccable credentials. Perusing his current book, Stanford White, one finds the expected: authoritative research in archives, an array of period illustrations of rooms and decorative art, and a study that includes listings of objets d'art and of Gilded Age millionaires.	1
Yet under this conventional veneer there exists a wry sense of humor—the love of a picturesque analogy or a picturesque turn of phrase. For instance, Craven begins Stanford White by suggesting a parallel between the "new warriors" from America who raped the Old World of antiquities and the plundering Vikings who scourged Europe in the ninth century (p. xiii). One wielded the sword; the other used vast financial resources. Craven dubbed these warriors "American glitterati" (p. 2). We know we are in the hands of a skillful storyteller.	. . .

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