Jennifer L. Anderson will speak on her book "Mahogany" at the Hunt Club in Chagrin Falls on September 13, 2014 - if interested please contact Joe Peter at 216-702-5314 for reservations.

Ms. Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Stony Brook University (SUNY).  Jennifer has an MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and a PhD in Atlantic and Early American History from New York University. She is the author of Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012) about the social and environmental history of the tropical timber trade in the 18th century. She has received many awards and fellowships, including the Society of American Historians’ Nevins Prize for Best-Written dissertation. She headed the research team for the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” about the Northern slave trade and in 2013 curated an exhibition at NYU about Sylvester Manor, a 17th committed to public history, she has served as a historical consultant at numerous historic sites and museums.

By the 1760s, imported mahogany was all the rage for fine furniture in colonial America. As these coveted trees were quickly depleted in much of their native Caribbean range, however, the mahogany trade became an increasingly risky and competitive business. Nevertheless, many New England merchants, sea captains, and cabinetmakers—eager to profit from this desirable wood—took their chances in this new line of trade. In her talk, “From Rainforest to Parlor: The Mahogany Trade in Colonial New England”, Prof. Jennifer Anderson will discuss some highlights of her research into the adventures (and misadventures) of these various participants and their quest to secure this precious material.  A brief synopsis her book: “In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation.

Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled “huntsmen” who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the Jennifer Anderson offers a dynamic portrait of the many players, locales, and motivations that drove the voracious quest for mahogany to adorn American parlors and dining rooms. This complex story reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental costs of America’s growing self-confidence and how desire shaped not only the natural world but people's lives.