By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, professor at Harvard University, and founding member of Exponent II. In 1986 she contributed her essay “Lusterware” to the Philip A. Barlow-edited collection, A Thoughtful Faith: Essays on Belief by Mormon Scholars (Canon Press), from which the following is excerpted. Lusterware, the metaphor …