Colonial Craftsmen: And the Beginnings of American Industry

The vanished ways of colonial America's skilled craftsmen are vividly reconstructed in this superb book by Edwin Tunis. With incomparable wit and learning, and in over 450 meticulous drawings, the author describes the working methods and products, houses and shops, town and country trades, and individual and group enterprises by which the early Americans forged the economy of the New World.

In the tiny coastal settlements, which usually sprang up around a mill or near a tanyard, the first cr...