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I love this photo. It was taken in 1900 during an era of great nostalgia for "the olden times" as the label at the bottom puts it. But what is being represented here is a representation of an 1820s/30s romanticized representation of what the 18th century supposedly looked like.
The spinning wheel, for example, became an object of nostalgic desire in the 1830s, at precisely the moment when cheap cloth was becoming more widely available thanks to industrialization in England, the expansion of slavery in the cotton south, and the growth of mills in NE.
The open hearth fireplace became an object of nostalgic desire in the 1840s when coal stoves became more widely available. People preferred the efficiency of the new stoves, but lamented the glow of the fireplace and the physical closeness it demanded.
Note also how the photo depicts female leisure (smoking a pipe and glancing at the fire) but reveals a technological world that depended upon huge amounts of female labor (spinning cloth for the family, tending the fire, cooking over it, etc.).
The mantle clock looks to me like it probably dates to the 1830s. By that point, any family with enough money to buy a clock like that would likely have banished the spinning wheel to the attic, to be discovered by kids curious about "olden times" objects like that.
Would need to do more research on this, but the lamps on the mantle might be kerosene lamps, which were not in use until the 1850s.
In 1900, the incandescent light bulb was still a relatively new technology. These lanterns would have looked quaint (and "olden") only to people with the resources to access that new lighting technology. For many in 1900, those lanterns were part of their present, not the past.
So if this 1900 photo makes you nostalgic, the image is making you nostalgic for an era when people were being nostalgic for the era when people first started being nostalgic. I'm tempted to say it's "nostalgia all the way down," but it's not. Or at least, so I would argue.
I'm writing (or trying to write) a book about nostalgia in 19th century America, in which I argue that nostalgia was a relatively new emotion in the early 19th century. (I know, Homer's homesickness...don't @ me). Here are some thoughts on that process. https://ageofrevolutions.com/2018/09/10/the-challenges-of-writing-a-history-of-nostalgia-set-in-the-age-of-democratic-revolutions/
One last necessary point about nostalgia, given that we're living in the age of MAGA nostalgia. Like this 1900 photo, all forms of nostalgia collapse the complex past into a static and highly inaccurate version of the past itself.
Tho nostalgia's allure is hard to resist & most of us will never successfully break free of it (nor should we necessarily try); we should also be aware that nostalgia tells us more truths about our present, than it does about the past. Nostalgia almost always lies about the past.
An earlier thread on MAGA nostalgia, self-serving uses of history, and a historian (and abolitionist) from the 1830s who has some things to teach us today. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/938804732335759360?s=20
Another thread distinguishing between two types of nostalgia: 1) restorative nostalgia which is usually politically reactionary (eg, MAGA) and 2) reflective nostalgia which is more multi-valent politically. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/987071244603310080?s=20
