author
C. Malcolm Watkins
A pioneering museum historian who showed how ordinary objects can tell rich stories about early America. His work helped make decorative arts, archaeology, and everyday life central to the way many readers and visitors understand the past.
3 Audiobooks
North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century
by C. Malcolm Watkins
About the author
Best known as an American historian, archaeologist, and curator, he focused on early American material culture, especially the decorative arts and the meaning of everyday objects. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard College and began his museum career in the 1930s at the Wells Historical Museum, the forerunner of Old Sturbridge Village.
He later spent more than three decades at the Smithsonian, where he served in the Department of Cultural History at what is now the National Museum of American History. His work helped shape the study of material culture by treating household goods, ceramics, and other familiar things as serious historical evidence rather than mere antiques.
Watkins is remembered as an influential interpreter of American life whose books and museum work invited people to see history in the objects around them. He also played an important role in the growth of historical archaeology and in broadening how museums presented the American past.