Joseph Larnerd's Undercut: Cut Glass in Working-Class Life during the Long Gilded Age offers an innovative and imaginative account of the subjecthood of American cut glass. Eschewing traditional celebratory accounts of the medium, Larnerd pursues a form of human, lived-experience design history in which the main protagonists are the unknown makers, maintainers, and lower-class viewers who experienced mixed feelings about the luxury good. His is an emotional history of material culture. - Edward S. Cooke, Jr., author of Global Objects: Toward a Connected Art History (2022)
Joseph Larnerd is the most exciting voice to emerge in decorative arts scholarship in a generation. His deeply researched, theoretically sophisticated, and above all, beautifully written study of cut glass is like the subject itself: multifaceted in its implications, crystalline in its clarity. Undercut is a crucial intervention into the field, one that sets a new standard for material culture studies in the 21st century. - Glenn Adamson, author of A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present (2024)