"What do you suggest for a present?": flatware as late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century wedding gifts
| Author(s) | Regnier, Suzanne Marie | |
| Date Accessioned | 2020-06-19T12:01:38Z | |
| Date Available | 2020-06-19T12:01:38Z | |
| Publication Date | 1998 | |
| Abstract | Flatware has been a traditional wedding gift in America for more than one hundred fifty years. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, an era in which dining was a. highly ritualized activity among the middle and upper classes, gifts of flatware signified participation in this activity which required a thorough understanding of etiquette and a wide variety of flatware. ☐ This study compares flatware received as wedding gifts by three brides married in 1874, 1898, and 1915 to flatware references in trade catalogs, etiquette books, and ladies' magazines of the same period. All members of the du Pont family, these brides had more money and a higher standard of living than most of their contemporaries. By comparing their wedding flatware to examples of prescriptive literature, this analysis illustrates the wide variety of flatware forms available, how closely gifts of flatware reflected popular advice, and to what degree prescriptive literature mirrored elite lifestyles. | en_US |
| Advisor | Thompson, Eleanor McD. | |
| Degree | M.A. | |
| Program | University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture | |
| Unique Identifier | 1158999457 | |
| URL | http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/27259 | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| URI | https://search.proquest.com/docview/219898722?accountid=10457 | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Flatware -- United States | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Gifts -- United States | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Wedding etiquette -- United States | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Du Pont family | |
| Title | "What do you suggest for a present?": flatware as late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century wedding gifts | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |