Enchanted Objects investigates the relationship between visual art and contemporary fiction, addressing the problems that arise when paintings, deluxe books, porcelains, or statues are represented in contemporary novels. The distinction between objects and art objects depends on aesthetics. While some objects are authenticated through museum exhibits, others are hidden, broken, neglected, coveted, hoarded, or salvaged. Allan Hepburn asks four broad questions about aesthetics and value: What is a detail in visual art? Is all art ornamental? Does the value of an object increase because it is fragile? What defines ugliness? Contemporary novels, such as Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Barry Unsworth's Stone Virgin, and Bruce Chatwin's Utz offer implicit answers to these questions while critiquing museums and the determination to invest objects with value through display. Addressing current debates in museum studies, cultural studies, art history, and literary criticism, Enchanted Objects develops an extensive theory of how contemporary literature engages with and relates to aesthetic objects.

This insightful and beautifully illustrated book offers the first feminist analysis of the phenomenon of women art collectors in America. Dianne Sachko Macleod brings a surprising paradox to light, showing that collecting, which provided wealthy women with a private sense of solace, also liberated them to venture into the public sphere and make a lasting contribution to the emerging American culture. Beginning in the antebellum period, continuing through the Gilded Age, and reaching well into the twentieth century, Macleod shows how elite women enlisted the objets d'art and avant-garde paintings in their collections in causes ranging from the founding of modern museums to the campaign for women's suffrage.

In the tradition of Who Owns the Future? and The Second Machine Age, an MIT Media Lab scientist imagines how everyday objects can intuit our needs and improve our lives. We are now standing at the precipice of the next transformative development: the Internet of Things. Soon, connected technology will be embedded in hundreds of everyday objects we already use: our cars, wallets, watches, umbrellas, even our trash cans. These objects will respond to our needs, come to know us, and learn to think on our behalf. David Rose calls these devices—which are just beginning to creep into the marketplace—Enchanted Objects. Some believe the future will look like more of the same—more smartphones, tablets, screens embedded in every conceivable surface. Rose has a different vision: technology that atomizes, combining itself with the objects that make up the very fabric of daily living. Such technology will be woven into the background of our environment, enhancing human relationships and channeling desires for omniscience, long life, and creative expression. The enchanted objects of fairy tales and science fiction will enter real life. Groundbreaking, timely, and provocative, Enchanted Objects is a blueprint for a better future, where efficient solutions come hand in hand with technology that delights our senses. It is essential reading for designers, technologists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and anyone who wishes to understand the future and stay relevant in the Internet of Things.

The second installment (following Enchanted Secrets - FREE on Google Play!) The clock ticks once again... Kendra goes in search of a legendary wand in Salem. Meanwhile, her long,lost cousin, Willow, tries to stop another family curse, by enlisting the help of a dark witch. A woman on her own agenda.

A world of enchanted castles to color - including hidden objects to find! Debut artist Fabiana Attansio has created a spectacular book of intricate and imaginative castles to color, along with hidden objects to seek and find. This incredibly detailed and beautiful coloring book will appeal to serious colorists who are looking to escape to a magical world.

This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature.

A gentle, delicately illustrated story, told from the perspective of a young boy who has lost a beloved grandfather. Occupying two dimensions--one that is tangible and heart-wrenching in its details of traces left behind, and another that is cosmic, created by the boy's imagination as he longs for a reunion--'One Day' explores the inner world of a child as he comes to terms with a deeply felt and aching loss.

This second volume in the new TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology series seeks to push the research agendas of materiality and lived experience further into the study of Roman magic, a field that has, until recently, lacked object-focused analysis. Building on the pioneering studies in Boschung and Bremmer's (2015) Materiality of Magic, the editors of the present volume have collected contributions that showcase the value of richly-detailed, context-specific explorations of the magical practices of the Roman world. By concentrating primarily on the Imperial period and the western provinces, the various contributions demonstrate very clearly the exceptional range of influences and possibilities open to individuals who sought to use magical rituals to affect their lives in these specific contexts – something that would have been largely impossible in earlier periods of antiquity. Contributions are presented from a range of museum professionals, commercial archaeologists, university academics and postgraduate students, making a compelling case for strengthening lines of communication between these related areas of expertise.

This highly anticipated follow-up volume presents the exquisite designs of Tord Boontje, one of the most creative and romantic industrial designers working today. Tord Boontje: Enchanted World is a comprehensive visual document of the designer’s most recent work. As an artist and a craftsman, Boontje incorporates an artisanal sensibility into contemporary industrial design, drawing upon a rich graphic tradition to create objects of exceptional beauty and delicacy. Featured here are some of his latest works, many undertaken after Boontje stepped down as Head of Design Products at the Royal College of Art in 2013 (a position he assumed after Ron Arad in 2009). Now, solely focused on his own design studio in London, Boontje showcases many of his designs, including the wispy Icarus Lamp, an armoire constructed entirely of pressed-metal fig “leaves” for Meta, a portable Bluetooth speaker for Yamaha hidden under a curtain of horsehair, and many other romantic explorations that have made Boontje’s output stand out in the world of design. Combining developing technologies and traditional approaches, his pieces are prized for their originality, delicacy, and intricate detail. This book is a must for design lovers, providing readers with a window into how Boontje crafts his unique objects, from studio prototype to retail. Indeed, the book is conceived as a work of total design, using special printing effects and beautiful marginalia on almost every page in the form of Boontje’s sensitive and romantic detailed hand-drawn illustrations that have served as the inspiration for many of the objects featured here.

"The world is on the move; seas rise, villages are emptied, coastlines are redrawn, deserts spread to the suburbs, snowfall increases and lost battlefields re-emerge. Only soap operas give any impression of permanence. Traditional fortresses like home, dwelling and nation are increasingly exposed as porous, fabricated and expensive things. The ways are opening for a pervasive and benevolent nomadism, a new art of living, on both grand and individuated scales." In this lovely photo-essay, Phil Smith - playwright, walk-performance artist (Wrights & Sites and Crabman) and author (Mis-Guides, Mythogeography, On Walking and Counter-Tourism) draws our attention to a "chorus of surprises" "yelling from the sides of the road like particularly unruly spectators at a parade". Focusing on signs, simulacra, objects and places that prove to be more, less or other than what they seem (all illustrated throughout the book) the author encourages us to look afresh at our quotidian urban and rural surroundings to see what lies just beneath the surface. Once identified, these absurd, empty, recalcitrant enchantments can transform the way we live and think and occupy our inner and outer landscapes. Urging us to "hypersensitize ourselves to the full blast of contemporary landscape's intensity", Phil Smith explains how to "let our tentacles unfurl" in order to explore and see the world around us in all its glory.