Art: Early regional furniture, divinely diverse

Besides their obvious aesthetic appeal, exhibitions of historical decorative arts serve as explorations in cultural anthropology. They reveal how our forebears solved practical problems of daily living, as well as their material values and tastes.

This was revealed to stunning effect 12 years ago at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in a show called "Worldly Goods," which displayed for our delectation a wide variety of furniture, silver, and other domestic accessories made and used in Pennsylvania from its founding to the middle of the 18th century.

Organized by the museum's then-curator of American decorative arts, Jack L. Lindsey, that exhibition was more than just edifying on a historical and antiquarian level, it was exciting. This is partly because at nearly 600 objects it was huge, more than one could digest in a single viewing.

Now Winterthur, the mother church of American decorative arts, has put together a show that conveys a similar spirit of enthusiastic and satisfying discovery.

Although considerably smaller, at about 160 objects, and more tightly focused to elucidate a different theme, "Paint, Pattern & People" similarly provides fascinating insights into the folkways of Pennsylvania's early decades.

The exhibition has two authors, Wendy A. Cooper, Winterthur's senior curator of furniture, and Lisa M. Minardi, assistant curator of furniture for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Furniture Project.

Their titles refer to two parameters of "Paint, Pattern" - that it's essentially about furniture and that it confines its gaze to 16 counties in the southeastern corner of the state - an area roughly bounded by Carlisle and Gettysburg in the west, Sunbury in the north, Easton on the Delaware River, and Philadelphia and its "home counties."

Chronologically, this show begins a few decades before "Worldly Goods" stopped and continues through 1850. This time span allows the curators to include a strong representation of early furniture made and used by German settlers, little of which dated before the 1760s survives.

Yet the exhibition's signal characteristic is its focus on locally specific furniture forms within the region. The project seeks not only to identify these localisms but also to link specific objects with particular makers and owners. Every object in the show tells a documented story.