Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY … This is Paula Baxter touching base with everyone. I’m looking forward to teaching “History of Decorative Arts” this month. I just have to finish my PowerPoints. Now this is a serious business. A survey history of interior design that moves from antiquity to the present merits a lot of images to show. But, I’ve learned through experience that looking at a blizzard of images doesn’t guarantee total recall. What is better is to show the right number of images with visual characteristics and cues that stick in the memory!
And I’m still determined that we’ll have fun in this course. I’m a fervent believer in educational entertainment. You’ll learn why Neoclassicism became the style of choice in revolutionary America, and later in revolutionary France. And I’ll show you the difference between a highboy and a lowboy, and, no, it has nothing to do with cocktails! Did you know that a previous Prince of Wales (with a rocky love life) was responsible for one of the greatest period styles? Or that misogynistic male Modernists helped create the look of our contemporary kitchens?
As if I don’t have enough to do, I’ve also embarked on a book which will be published next year by Schiffer Publishing. It’s my second book for them, the first was Southwest Indian Jewelry (2001). Before that one, I wrote The Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry (Oryx, 2000). This new venture is to be called Southwestern Indian Rings, and will have around 350 color photographs. Such a work requires travel to the American Southwest, where I’ll be coordinating photography and interviewing Navajo and Pueblo artists. In March, it means attending the Heard Museum Guild Fair and Indian Market, where nearly 700 of the best artists show their works. Book research also calls me to the annual Santa Fe Indian Market in August.
This means, too, that I will be wearing my finest jewelry to class each week. I’ve been a compulsive, crazed collector of this Indian jewelry since the late 1980s. So every week I’ll wear something different. Such an obsession was what got me into writing about the jewelry, too. I noted early on when I started collecting that there wasn’t all that much written about the subject. As an art librarian and educator, I thought “oh I should do something about this.” And just look at the trouble I’m in now. Don’t worry about me, however. I know exactly how to handle this situation. At these Indian fairs I go early, and spend the first two hours of the show in frantic running from booth to booth. I buy my objects of desire, and then revert to reporter-writer mode. Aren’t you glad I have my priorities straight?
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The Purchase College Interior Design Certificate Program has been expanded for 2011. 
