'The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually': Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, ca. 1810-1930

Harris, Howell John

doi:10.1086/648372

'The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually': Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, ca. 1810-1930

Harris, Howell John

Authors

Howell John Harris

Abstract

Cast-iron stoves for heating and cooking became ubiquitous features of the American home by the middle of the nineteenth century and remained an important domestic technology into the early twentieth. Their makers invested a great deal of effort into the design of their goods, whose consumers expected stoves to be both visually attractive and useful. There was an enormous variety of stove models and increasingly rapid superficial change but also technological convergence and stylistic consensus. The article explores this apparent paradox and explains it by focusing on the comparatively few men who designed most American stoves in the industry’s heyday.

Citation

Harris, H. J. (2009). 'The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually': Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, ca. 1810-1930. Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture, 43(4), 365-406. https://doi.org/10.1086/648372

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2009
Deposit Date	Jan 5, 2011
Publicly Available Date	Jan 12, 2011
Journal	Winterthur Portfolio
Print ISSN	0084-0416
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	43
Issue	4
Pages	365-406
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1086/648372
Publisher URL	http://www.jstor.org/stable/info/10.1086/648372