In this stunning catalog, Wees, curator of decorative arts at the Clark Art Institute, shares her extensive knowledge of silver. Robert Sterling Clark, who established the Art Institute in 1955, preferred Huguenot silver? especially that of Paul de Lamerie? so his collection, which contains typical objects from the early 16th to the mid-20th centuries, is especially rich in 18th-century examples. Wees arranges this collection according to general function ("Dining," "Lighting," etc.) and prefaces each chapter with exhaustively footnoted essays. She accompanies each item with crisp black-and-white photographs, a wealth of description, and helpful commentary. Analogous to Kathryn Buhler's standard catalog of American silver in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, this is a wonderful tool for researching makers and hallmarks, comparing stylistic elements, or just marveling at the beauty of an extraordinary collection. While not intended to be a historical compendium, this informative, visual feast belongs in all silver reference collections and will also certainly appeal to individual collectors. 19 colour & 1,222 b/w illustrations

The Middle Ages were marked by dramatic social, economic, political, and religious changes. Diverse regional and local conditions, and varied social classes - including peasant, artisan, merchant, clergy, nobility, and rulers - resulted in differing needs for furniture. The social settings for furniture included official and private residences both grand and humble, churches and monasteries, and civic institutions, including places of governance and learning, such as municipal halls, guild halls, and colleges. This volume explores how furniture contributed to the social fabric within these varied spaces. The chronological range of this volume extends from the fall of the Roman Empire through to the early Renaissance, a period which exhibited a wide array of types, styles, and motifs, including Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance. Rural and regional styles of furniture are also considered, as well as techniques of furniture manufacture. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, this volume presents essays that examine key characteristics of the furniture of the period on the themes of Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations.

In early modern England, boxes furnished minds as readily as they furnished rooms, shaping ideas about the challenges of interpretation, and negotiations of the book itself as text and material object. Engaging with recent work on material culture and the history of the book, Lucy Razzall weaves together close readings of texts and objects, from wills, plays, sermons and religious polemic, to chests, book-bindings, reliquaries and coffins. She demonstrates how the material and imaginative possibilities of the box were dynamically connected in post-Reformation England, structuring modes of thought. These early modern responses to materiality offer ways in which the discipline of book history might reframe its analysis of the material text. In tracing the early modern significance of the box as matter and metaphor, this book reveals the origins of some of the enduring habits of thought with which we still respond to people, texts and things.

England July 1540: it is one of the hottest summers on record and the court of Henry VIII is embroiled, once again, in political scandal. Anne Cleves is out. Thomas Cromwell is to be executed and, in the countryside, an aristocratic teenager named Catherine Howard prepares to become fifth wife to the increasingly unpredictable monarch... In the five centuries since her death, Catherine Howard has been dismissed as 'a wanton', 'inconsequential' or a naive victim of her ambitious family, but the story of her rise and fall offers not only a terrifying and compelling story of an attractive, vivacious young woman thrown onto the shores of history thanks to a king's infatuation, but an intense portrait of Tudor monarchy in microcosm: how royal favour was won, granted, exercised, displayed, celebrated and, at last, betrayed and lost. The story of Catherine Howard is both a very dark fairy tale and a gripping political scandal.

In this fascinating new book, Malcolm Vale sets out to recapture the splendour of the court culture of western Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Exploring the century or so between the death of St Louis and the rise of Burgundian power in the Low Countries, he illuminates a period in the history of princes and court life previously overshadowed by that of the courts of the dukes of Burgundy. Taking in subjects as diverse as art patronage and gambling, hunting and devotional religion, Malcolm Vale rediscovers a richness and abundance of artistic, literary, and musical life. He shows how, despite the pressures of political fragmentation, unrest, and a nascent awareness of national identity, a common culture emerged in English, French, and Dutch court societies at this time. The result is a ground-breaking re-evaluation of the nature and role of the court in European history and a celebration of a forgotten age.

Although life in the Middle Ages was not as comfortable and safe as it is for most people in industrialized countries today, the term "Dark Ages" is highly misleading. The era was not so primitive and crude as depictions in film and literature would suggest. Even during the worst years of the centuries immediately following the fall of Rome, the legacy of that civilization survived. This book covers diet, cooking, housing, building, clothing, hygiene, games and other pastimes, fighting and healing in medieval times. The reader will find numerous misperceptions corrected. The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography and a listing of collections of medieval art and artifacts and related sites across the United States and Canada so that readers in North America can see for themselves some of the matters discussed in the book. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.

In Culture and Comfort Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and commercialization, its ties to industry and commerce—in the form of more affordable, machine-made furniture and drapery—became stronger. By the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile. Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made it available to all, Culture and Comfort reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.

"This monograph is the definitive survey of iron tools and other fittings in use during the period c1066 to 1540AD. Exceptional in a north-western European context for its range and coverage of artefacts from both rural and urban excavations, much of the material described here was recovered during 'rescue' projects in the 1960s and 1970s funded by the State through the Ministry of Public Works and Buildings and their successors. The text contains almost everything necessary to identify, date and understand medieval iron objects. In scope and detail there is still no published parallel and, as such, it will be essential for almost any archaeologist working in later medieval archaeology, particularly in the fields of excavation, finds study, museums and research."

As well as fulfilling a functional need, furniture has always been an index of status. From the throne of Tutankhamen or the bed of State of Louis XIV to the austere Shaker chest or the Charles Eames chair and later modern pieces from Europe, the Far East and the United States, the style of each piece tells much about the outlook of the makers and the needs and skills of the time. This absorbing history traces the development of furniture design and production, from the days of ancient Egypt to the present, describing what articles were made in each period, how they were made, and what were the social and economic conditions that affected style and finish. The author discusses techniques such as joinery, turning, veneering, marquetry, polishing, upholstery, bentwood work and lamination. Many examples are shown in the illustrations, which are invaluable recognition sources and a lively visual accompaniment to the text.