Mike Bell is a museum curator at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, specializing in period furniture and items relating to entertainment and popular culture. After attending the University of Buffalo, Bell studied the techniques of late eighteenth and early nineteenth furniture makers at Old Sturbridge Village Museum in Massachusetts. He served there as assistant conservator for the antiques furniture and wooden objects in the Sturbridge museum collection from 1978 to 1982. A talented musician and cabinetmaker, this is Bell's first appearance in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly.