Hard covered book titled IN PRAISE OF AMERICA American Decorative Arts, 1650-1830 / Fifty Years of Discovery Since the 1929 Girl Scouts Loan Exhibition by Wendy Cooper, with a foreword by J. Carter Brown, Director, National Gallery of Art, Selected Photography by Richard Cheek, 1980, 280 pages, illustrated with 360 photographs, 52 in full color, with dust jacket, black cloth bound with gold lettering. ISBN 0394509943

The event that brought American antiques into the forefront of world collecting was the now legendary 1929 exhibition sponsored by Girl Scouts of the USA. Now this lavishly illustrated book, published on the 50th anniversary of the exhibition, presents 180 years of magnificent American decorative arts and antiques - furniture, paintings, glass, ceramics, pewter, etc. - as they are now understood in the light of the burst of scholarship and discovery that followed and was inspired by that exhibition.
The 360 superb photographs at the heart of the book present American antiques that have been chosen and assessed in detail as the best of their kind by the author and 14 of America's most distinguished dealers, collectors, and curators.
Chapter by chapter, the text deals with topics of basic interest and importance to collectors - topics such as documentation, patronage, individual craftsmens ornamental techniques, upholstered furniture, and regional variations.

Chapters include:

• SEARCH & RESEARCH
• FORM & FABRIC
• AMERICAN PATRONAGE
• CRAFTSMEN AND ORNAMENT
• REGIONALISM
• DESIGN WITH A DIFFERENCE
• THE CLASSICAL IMPULSE

This elegant book is in VG condition,  pages clean and intact, and the binding is tight. Small tear on the dust jacket at the top edge.  A must have for your collector's library!