Neat Pieces is a detailed, extensively illustrated survey of the major forms and makers of the ""plain style"" of furniture made in the 1800s. Simply designed, solidly constructed of local woods, and usually unadorned, such pieces were used daily by their owners for storage, sleeping, eating, and more. Today, this furniture is read for clues into a past way of life by historians, folklorists, and other experts. It is also prized by museums, antiques dealers and auction houses, and furniture appraisers, collectors, and makers. ""Neat Pieces"" first appeared as the companion volume to the Atlanta History Center's seminal 1983 exhibit of the same name. The exhibit featured 126 exemplary pieces of furniture (including chairs, tables, slabs, huntboards, washstands, and candlestands). Each of them is described and illustrated in this book. Photographs in the original edition of ""Neat Pieces"" were black-and-white; here they are in full color. A new foreword by Deanne Levison looks at related publications and exhibits of the subsequent two decades. The introduction, by William W. Griffin, provides information on furniture forms, nomenclature, and finishes. Also included in the book is a list of more than twelve hundred nineteenth-century Georgia furniture craftsmen, indicating for each the key details of their life and occupation.
