The Author

The author and friend in her early 1960s play kitchen.

Catherine Seiberling Pond was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, where her early visual interest in suburban house types and studying floor plans and rooms in 1960s design magazines began a passion for historic architecture and domestic spaces. Catering doll teas from her aqua Easy Bake oven, messing up her mother’s pink-applianced 1950s kitchen for a Girl Scout “Cooking” badge, and hours spent in her own pink play kitchen under the basement stairs would instill a life-long love of kitchens, pantries and food.

She received her BA in art history from Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts) and spent her junior year studying art and architecture at University College London. She has her M.A. in historic preservation studies from Boston University and spent many years working in historic house museums, historic preservation consulting and public relations in New England.

For over twenty years she has contributed a variety of house-related and personal essays to design magazines such as Victoria and Old-House Interiors, among others. Her first book The Pantry—Its History and Modern Uses was published in May 2007 by Gibbs Smith, Publisher and combined her interest in pantries as well as the domestic and design history of kitchen spaces. You can read more about pantries and earlier domestic musings (2005-2010) at her blog In the Pantry.

Catherine Pond and her family have made their home on a Kentucky ridge farm for the past six years where they raise cattle and all sorts of animals. You can read more about their farm life on Catherine's blog Farmwife At Midlife.

The 1950s American Kitchen is Catherine's first book for Shire Books.

For further Info: CatherinePond.com