Books in the The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950 series

Through a close look at the history of the modernist hooked rug, this book raises important questions about the broader history of American modernism in the first half of the twentieth century. Although hooked rugs are not generally associated with the avant-garde.

Through both longer essays and shorter case studies, this book examines the relationship of European women from various countries and backgrounds to collecting.

Despite William Hunter''s stature as one of the most important collectors and men of science of the eighteenth century, and the fact that his collection is the foundation of Scotland''s oldest public museum, The Hunterian, until now there has been no comprehensive examination in a single volume of all his collections in their diversity. This volume restores Hunter to a rightful position of prominence among the medical men whose research and amassing of specimens transformed our understanding of the natural world and man''s position within it. This volume comprises essays by international specialists and are as diverse as Hunter''s collections themselves, dealing as they do with material that ranges from medical and scientific specimens, to painting, prints, books and manuscripts. The first sections focus upon Hunter''s own collection and his response to it, while the final section contextualises Hunter within the wider sphere. A special feature of the volume is the inclusion of references to the Hunterian''s web pages and on-line databases. These enable searches for items from Hunter''s collections, both from his museum and library. Locating Hunter''s collecting within the broader context of his age and environment, this book provides an original approach to a man and collection whose importance has yet to be comprehensively assessed.

This collection of fourteen essays by distinguished art and cultural historians examine points of similarity and difference in British and American art collecting.

Although much has been written on the aesthetic value of color, there are other values that adhere to it with economic and social values among them. Through case studies of particular colors and colored objects, this volume demonstrates just how complex the history of color is by focusing on the diverse social and cultural meanings of color; the trouble, pain, and suffering behind the production and application of these colors; the difficult technical processes for making and applying color; and the intricacy of commercial exchanges and knowledge transfers as commodities and techniques moved from one region to another. By emphasizing color''s materiality, the way in which it was produced, exchanged, and used by artisans, artists, and craftspersons, contributors draw attention to the disjuncture between the beauty of color and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into its production, circulation, and application as well as to the complicated and varied social meanings attached to color within specific historical and social contexts. This book captures color''s global history with chapters on indigo plantations in India and the American South, cochineal production in colonial Oaxaca, the taste for brightly colored Chinese objects in Europe, and the thriving trade in vermilion between Europeans and Native Americans. To underscore the complexity of the technical knowledge behind color production, there are chapters on the ''discovery'' of Prussian blue, Brazilian feather techné, and wallpaper production. To sound the depths of color''s capacity for social and cultural meaning-making, there are chapters that explore the significance of black ink in Shakespeare''s sonnets, red threads in women''s needlework samplers, blues in Mayan sacred statuary, and greens and yellows in colored glass bracelets that were traded across the Arabian desert in the late Middle Ages. The purpose of this book is to recover color''s complex-and sometimes morally troubling-past, and in doing so, to restore a sense of wonder and appreciation for our colorful world. With its nuanced and complex depiction of how color operated within local contexts and moved across the globe, this book will appeal to art historians, social and cultural historians, museum curators, literary scholars, rhetoric scholars, and historians of science and technology.

This volume explores the collecting and display of objects from the art collection of China's eighteenth century Yuanmingyuan - or "Summer Palace" - in Western museums.

With object study at the core, this book brings together a collection of essays that address the past and present of craft production, its use and meaning within a range of community settings from the Huron Wendat of colonial Quebec to the Girls' Friendly Society of twentieth-century England.

Through the example of Central Pacific Railroad executives, Manufacturing the Modern Patron redirects attention from the usual art historical protagonists - artistic producers - and rewrites narratives of American art from the unfamiliar vantage of patrons and collectors.

Captures color's global history with chapters on indigo plantations in India and the American South, cochineal production in colonial Oaxaca, the taste for brightly colored Chinese objects in Europe, and the thriving trade in vermilion between Europeans and Native Americans. This book is also suitable for art historians and museum curators.

Why did writers' private homes become so linked to their work that contemporaries began preserving them as museums? This title addresses this and other questions by providing an overview of social forces that brought writers' homes to the forefront of the French imagination at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.

Traces the development of one of Japan's best-documented ceramic types, from its beginnings around 1600 until the abolition of the domain system in 1871. This book explores the operation of Takatori as the official ceramic workshop of the Kuroda, lords of one of the largest domains in Japan.

Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines transnational relations and intercultural exchange between modern Europe and Asia. At the core of the study are three major collectors: Enrico (Henri) Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt.

Art history has enriched the study of material culture as a scholarly field. This interdisciplinary volume enhances this literature through the contributors'' engagement with gender as the conceptual locus of analysis in terms of femininity, masculinity, and the spaces in between. Collectively, these essays by art historians and museum professionals argue for a more complex understanding of the relationship between objects and subjects in gendered terms. The objects under consideration range from the quotidian to the exotic, including beds, guns, fans, needle paintings, prints, drawings, mantillas, almanacs, reticules, silver punch bowls, and collage. These material goods may have been intended to enforce and affirm gendered norms, however as the essays demonstrate, their use by subjects frequently put normative formations of gender into question, revealing the impossibility of permanently fixing gender in relation to material goods, concepts, or bodies. This book will appeal to art historians, museum professionals, women''s and gender studies specialists, students, and all those interested in the history of objects in everyday life.

Through both longer essays and shorter case studies, this book examines the relationship of European women from various countries and backgrounds to collecting.

Filling a critical gap in Vienna 1900 studies, this book offers a new reading of fin-de-siecle culture in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy by looking at the preoccupation with embroidery, fabrics, clothing, and fashion-both literally and metaphorically. The author resurrects lesser known critics, practitioners, and curators.

Craft practice has a rich history and remains vibrant, sustaining communities while negotiating cultures within local or international contexts. More than two centuries of industrialization have not extinguished handmade goods; rather, the broader force of industrialization has redefined and continues to define the context of creation, deployment and use of craft objects. With object study at the core, this book brings together a collection of essays that address the past and present of craft production, its use and meaning within a range of community settings from the Huron Wendat of colonial Quebec to the GirlsΓÇÖ Friendly Society of twentieth-century England. The making of handcrafted objects has and continues to flourish despite the powerful juggernaut of global industrialization, whether inspired by a calculated refutation of industrial sameness, an essential means to sustain a cultural community under threat, or a rejection of the imposed definitions by a dominant culture. The broader effects of urbanizing, imperial and globalizing projects shape the multiple contexts of interaction and resistance that can define craft ventures through place and time. By attending to the political histories of craft objects and their makers, over the last few centuries, these essays reveal the creative persistence of various hand mediums and the material debates they represented.