Download or read book Drawing on America's Past written by and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents watercolor renderings along with a selection of the artifacts in the Index of American Design, a visual archive of decorative, folk, and popular arts made in America from the colonial period to about 1900. Three essays explore the history, operation, and ambitions of the Index of American Design, examine folk art collecting in America during the early decades of the twentieth century, and consider the Index's role in the search for a national cultural identity in the early twentieth-century United States.