J. Ritchie GarrisonDirector, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture
Ritchie Garrison is Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and Professor of History. He teaches courses in American vernacular landscapes, English Design History, material culture, early American craftsmanship, and history.
Garrison's other research projects include: a study of the outbuilding patterns of the early Republic, a study of the early warehouses and commercial structures of America's port cities, the development of center tables in 19th century America and an edited edition of two Civil War daries kept by officers in the Massachusetts 54h and 55th Colored Regiments.
He has consulted widely on a variety of museum and historic house topics, taught museum studies for twenty years prior to becoming Director of the Winterthur Program and lectured widely on a range of topics. When he finds spare time, he makes furniture with traditional hand tools, draws and paints.
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Garrison is the author of Two Carpenters: Architecture and Building in Early New England, 1799-1859, winner of the Vernacular Architecture Forum's 2007 Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize and the 2007 Historic New England Book Prize. He is also author of Landscape and Material Life in Franklin County, Massachusetts,1771-1860, that Choice recognized as an Outstanding Academic Book. Other books include American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field (coedited with Ann Smart Martin), and After Ratification: Material Life in Delaware, 1789-1820, (coedited with Bernard Herman and Barbara McLean Ward).