Scholarship Award for Andrea Pappas
Andrea Pappas wins another award for scholarship. The Decorative Arts Society committee for the Montgomery Prize and Award has selected her recent book, Embroidering the Landscape: Women, Art and the Environment in British North America, 1740-1770, for the 2024 Charles F. Montgomery Award. This annual award honors the most outstanding example of a scholar's first major publication in the field of American decorative arts. Pappas' book, published in 2023, situates large embroidered pictures in the context of the history of women and the environment at mid-eighteenth century, connecting them to the emerging science of botany, the first agricultural revolution, the environmental changes wrought by settler colonialism, and colonial women's practical knowledge of horticulture and pomology. "I am thrilled and humbled to have my work recognized in this way" says Pappas. "The book was ten years in the making and is the result of following my curiosity about these objects. We knew so little about their meanings to their original audiences when I started digging into them that it was an exciting scholarly adventure."