The Country Store, Advancement
There are also nods to innovative technologies occurring in the room that are specific to this region, such as lifelike pot-bellied stove with scatterings of tiny pieces of anthracite coal and sawdust along the floorboards.
The image depicts a zoom caputre of the pot-belly stove and anthracite clutter created by Mrs. Fisher.
The image contains a zoom caputre of the butcher block and pepsi bottles on the floor. The boards are littered with saw dust.
These evoke the truth of evolution, a fate that would see our country’s commercial interests shift with progress and the development of specialty stores–-jewelry, clothing, furniture, hardware, and the like–which would become more prevalent in the 1950s onward, and slowly shed these personalized touches that made the Country story a living heart of the community, but they all got their start within a Country Store.
A photograph of miner's checking out of the company store.
![<a href="/omeka/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=50&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Photograph+of+Pennsylvania+Lumbermill+Workers%2C+Pennsylvania+Lumber+Heritage%2C+%5Bca.+late+nineteenth+century%5D">Photograph of Pennsylvania Lumbermill Workers, Pennsylvania Lumber Heritage, [ca. late nineteenth century]</a>](https://omeka.wilkes.edu/omeka/files/square_thumbnails/67280b807682376ae06ea2df85b6cfa5.jpg "<a href=\"/omeka/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=50&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Photograph+of+Pennsylvania+Lumbermill+Workers%2C+Pennsylvania+Lumber+Heritage%2C+%5Bca.+late+nineteenth+century%5D\">Photograph of Pennsylvania Lumbermill Workers, Pennsylvania Lumber Heritage, [ca. late nineteenth century]</a>")
A group of workers sitting outside a lumbermill.
Russ reflects on this change and states
that modern conditions have caused it to become antiquated is not to say that the country store was inefficient,or wasteful, or useless. [On] the contrary, it did a good job as distributor and buyer for its own marketing district; without it, the farmers would have been more isolated than they were. In fact it is hard to see how rural people of fifty or more years ago could have done without the general store, which sold them their staples and bought their produce. Like the horse and buggy, it represents an age in American history. That age was an age of mud roads, subsistence farming, small businesses, local isolation, and ruralness. Many general stores can still be found in country districts, but they are not the emporia they once were.
-William A. Russ, Jr. “The Country Store a Half Century Ago” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies Volume: 17 Issue 3 (1950), pp.212-214.
The Country Store represents the origins of the commercial development of America and from her overflowing stocked shelves to the trusted mailbox at the back, Fisher truly captures the nostalgia of this era.
The intriguing aspect of Fisher’s Dollhouse is how it shows how American identity has evolved through the decades of her time. She seems to capture the pivotal pieces within each room that would speak to the viewers on an individual level so that they feel the intention of the design.