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A fascinating account of the effects of turbulent history on one of Africa’s most storied kingdoms, Kongo: Power and Majesty presents over 170 works of art from the Kingdom of Kongo (an area that includes present-day Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola). The book covers 400 years of Kongolese culture, from the fifteenth century, when Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian merchants and missionaries brought Christianity to the region, to the nineteenth, when engagement with Europe had turned to colonial incursion and the kingdom dissolved under the pressures of displacement, civil war, and the devastation of the slave trade. The works of art—which range from depictions of European iconography rendered in powerful, indigenous forms to fearsome minkondi, or power figures—serve as an assertion of enduring majesty in the face of upheaval, and richly illustrate the book’s powerful thesis.
Egyptian bronze statuary has proven particularly intractable to chronological investigations. This study exploits clues offered by bronze royal statuettes to make identifications or stylistic assignments. A fuller understanding of the artistic milieu and role of small royal bronze statuary results.
Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in all of world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire in particular, the sale and exchange of silks, cottons, and woolens generated an immense amount of revenue and touched every level of society, from rural women tending silkworms to pashas flaunting layers of watered camlet to merchants traveling to Mecca and beyond. Sea Change offers the first comprehensive history of the Ottoman textile sector, arguing that the trade's enduring success resulted from its openness to expertise and objects from far-flung locations. Amanda Phillips skillfully marries art history with social and economic history, integrating formal analysis of various textiles into wider discussions of how trade, technology, and migration impacted the production and consumption of textiles in the Mediterranean from around 1400 to 1800. Surveying a vast network of textile topographies that stretched from India to Italy and from Egypt to Iran, Sea Change illuminates often neglected aspects of material culture, showcasing the objects' ability to tell new kinds of stories.
In 1907, more than a decade before the discovery of Tutankhamun s tomb, archaeologistsunearthed remains from the mummification and funeral of the pharaoh, who ruled ancient Egypt in the 14th century B.C. Now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, these materials provide physical evidence of burial rites of the now-legendary king, who is making headlines once again after new scientific investigations to determine the cause of his early death. "Tutankhamun's Funeral" includes a classic text written in1941 by Herbert E. Winlock, one of the early 20th century s leading Egyptologists, featuring in-depth analysis of the objects and their significance. In addition, anintroduction and appendix by Dorothea Arnold update the findings with recent scholarship.The book isillustrated throughout with new color photography as well as many historical images and drawings."
Man-made textile fibers are frequently encountered as trace evidence in criminal investigations. This study examined the effects of burial in soil on the biodeterioration of synthetic textile fibers such as cellulose acetate, nylon, polyesters and acrylics. Cellulose acetate fibers began to show signs of decomposition within two months after burial in common garden topsoil and were completely degraded within four to nine months. It was found that severely decomposed cellulose acetate fibers could be identified by pyrolysis-gas liquid chromatography even when other methods such as polarized light microscopy and dispersion staining failed. The solubility behavior of the cellulose acetate fiber...
Themes of the American West have been enduringly popular, and 'The American West in Bronze' features sixty-five iconic bronzes that display a range of subjects, from portrayals of the noble Indian to rough-and-tumble scenes of rowdy cowboys to tributes to the pioneers who settled the lands west of the Mississippi. Fascinating texts offer a fresh look at the roles that artists played in creating interpretations of the "vanishing West"--Whether based on fact, fiction or something in-between. These artists, including Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington, embody a range of life experiences and artistic approaches."'The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925' is the first full-scale exhibition t...
"What follows in these pages is the chronicle of ceramic objects unearthed in Raqqa in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Curator Emerita of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum, describes the dramatic journey of these ceramics from their discovery in the medieval city to the emporiums of Paris and New York, the drawing rooms of the great collectors, and the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum. Using art-historical detective work, archival documents, and scientific data, the author convincingly establishes provenance and dating, placing these objects - some of the most exquisite ever produced by Islamic potters - in a secure historical context for the first time."--BOOK JACKET.
This volume in a series of sixteen that features the more than two thousand works of art in the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art focuses on the art of glass. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.
Stone is one of the oldest building materials, and its conservation ranks as one of the most challenging in the field. The use of alkoxysilanes in the conservation of stone can be traced as far back as 1861, when A. W. von Hoffman suggested their use for the deteriorating limestone on the Houses of Parliament in London. Alkoxysilane-based formulations have since become the material of choice for the consolidation of stone outdoors.^l This volume, the first to cover comprehensively alkoxysilanes in stone consolidation, synthesizes the subject's vast and extensive literature, which ranges from production of alkoxysilanes in the nineteenth century to the extensive contributions from sol-gel sci...