Search results for ""author w h. bunting""

Bunting has a knack for spotting the unusual in a photograph, or some minor detail that, in fact, tells a major story about the how and why. From granite quarry operations to an itinerant cobbler in a sailing scow to hootchie-kootchie dancers at the state fair to deepwater ships, his page-long captions place these images in social and economic context--but this is not dry history. His research has uncovered a wealth of fascinating, often quirky detail (did you know that mummy wrappings were imported from Egypt for Maine papermaking?), and he makes frequent forays into the Maine storytelling tradition.

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Two hundred and thirty-four striking photographs of the port of Boston combine with interpretive commentary to recapture the flavor, buoyancy, and excitement of the city’s years as one of the two or three great American ports. After the Civil War Boston underwent a radical and successful transformation from a declining mercantile home port to an important and competitive modern seaport. At the same time the transition from sail to steam was taking place. Photographic studies of deep water sail and steam vessels, naval ships, fishing boats, catboats, tugs, schooners, and sloops, and of the picturesque wharves—all create a kaleidoscopic visual history of these years of change.The volume offers, as well, some of the most distinguished early work in photography, including the widest selection ever published of photographs by pioneer marine photographer Nathaniel Stebbins.

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Bunting has a knack for spotting the unusual in a photograph, or some minor detail that, in fact, tells a major story about the how and why. From granite quarry operations to an itinerant cobbler in a sailing scow to hootchie-kootchie dancers at the state fair to deepwater ships, his page-long captions place these images in social and economic context--but this is not dry history. His research has uncovered a wealth of fascinating, often quirky detail (did you know that mummy wrappings were imported from Egypt for Maine papermaking?), and he makes frequent forays into the Maine storytelling tradition.

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Sea Struck brings alive the final decades of square-rigged sail through the accounts of voyages made on three ships by three young men from Massachusetts. There is plenty of adventure here— storms, men overboard, discipline that bordered on brutality, and exotic ports. There is also a fascinating immersion in the lore of the sea and sail and the global web of connections in the New England maritime community.

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Postcards were the Instagrams of the early twentieth century. On one day in September 1906, 200,000 postcards were mailed from Coney Island. In 1913 some 968,000,000 postcards were sent in the U.S., more than seven per person. The majority of postcards made at the turn of the twentieth century were mass-produced lithograph or letterpress half-tones, but the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company produced “real photo postcards” in the form of silver gelatin prints made by exposing the negative onto photo paper card stock and developing it in a traditional wet darkroom. Eastern was the largest U.S. manufacturer of what it called “genuine” photo postcards. The images in this book were selected from 22,000 glass plate negatives created by the Eastern company between 1909 and World War II. As an archive of early twentieth-century Maine architectural photography, the Eastern collection (now housed at the Penobscot Marine Museum) has no equal, and it gives us many unexpected glimpses of Maine life. Maine residents, expatriates, and visitors will enjoy hours of pleasure in this journey through Maine's countryside, villages, and towns, guided by three historians who can bring a vista to life with a few well-chosen comments.

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