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Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Second Edition, Three Volume Set covers the standing of archaeology as a scientific discipline, how archaeology is practiced, both in the field and in the lab, provides an archaeological geographical overview encompassing all continents and time periods, and covers the role of archaeology in the modern world. This clearly structured thematic manner ensures a well-balanced presentation of the discipline across the world by the people who perform and experience archaeology as native scholars. Led by a brand new international editorial team, this book contains approximately 250 articles. From using home kits to analyze our DNA and find our ancestors'origin, to walking among ancient monuments embedded in modern cityscapes, visiting museums and archaeological sites, watching adventure movies, or playing video games about mummies coming to life, archaeology touches on many aspects of our everyday life. - Provides approximately 300 outstanding articles coherently structured into four key sections - Includes many brand new chapters on topics which have recently shot to prominence, including digital archaeology, and Islamic archaeology - Puts a greater emphasis on ethnic and gender diversity in editorial boards and contributors with its truly global authorship - Contains multiple diverse case studies and real-life examples in order to aid the reader

Eighteenth-century France witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of materially unstable art, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their creation to enormous pastel portraits vulnerable to the slightest touch or vibration. In A Delicate Matter, Oliver Wunsch traces these artistic practices to the economic and social conditions that enabled them: an ascendant class of art collectors who embraced fragile objects as a means of showcasing their disposable wealth.While studies of Rococo art have traditionally focused on style and subject matter, this book reveals how the physical construction of paintings and sculptures was central to the period's reconceptualization of art. Drawing on sources ranging from eighteenth-century artists'writings to twenty-first-century laboratory analyses, Wunsch demonstrates how the technical practices of eighteenth-century painters and sculptors provoked a broad transformation in the relationship between art, time, and money. Delicacy, which began the eighteenth century as a commodified extension of courtly sociability, was by century's end reimagined as the irreducible essence of art's autonomous value.Innovative and original, A Delicate Matter is an important intervention in the growing body of scholarship on durability and conservation in eighteenth-century French art. It challenges the art historical tendency to see decay as little more than an impediment to research, instead showing how physical instability played a critical role in establishing art's meaning and purpose.

Conservation of Books is the highly anticipated reference work on global book structures and their conservation, offering the first modern, comprehensive overview on this subject.The volume takes an international approach to its subject. Written by over 70 specialists in conservation and conservation science based in 19 countries, its 26 chapters cover traditional book structures from around the world, the materials from which they are made and how they degrade, and how to preserve and conserve them. It also examines the theoretical underpinnings of conservation: what and how to treat, and the ethical, cultural, and economic implications of treatment. Technical drawings and photographs illustrate the structures and treatments examined throughout the book. Ultimately, readers gain an in-depth understanding of the materiality of books in numerous global contexts and reflect on the practical considerations involved in their analysis and treatment.Conservation of Books is a quintessential reference work for book conservators and anyone working with books, such as collection managers, librarians, curators, dealers, collectors, historians, and related professionals. It is also an indispensable text for students to complement hands-on training in this field.

Crossing Borders and Confounding Identity advances our understanding of the diversity of Chinese women's experiences and achievements, from the Han Dynasty to the present. With a particular emphasis on literature and the arts, the chapters offer insights into the work of current Chinese women artists as well as literary, historical, and cultural portrayals of women and women's issues. Taken together, they provide new perspectives on Chinese women, their lived experiences and fictional representations, across a broad spectrum of literature, theater, film, and the visual arts. Accessible to nonspecialists and general readers, this book will also be a valuable resource for faculty who teach Asian studies courses in history and in the humanities, as well as for students in interdisciplinary Asian studies courses.

The Life and Work of Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757): The Queen of Pastel is the first extensive biographical narrative in English of Rosalba Carriera. It is also the first scholarly investigation of the external and internal factors that helped to create this female painter's unique career in eighteenth-century Europe. It documents the difficulties, complications, and consequences that arose then -- and can also arise today -- when a woman decides to become an independent artist. This book contributes a new, in-depth analysis of the interplay between society's expectations, generally accepted codices for gendered behaviour, and one single female painter's astute strategies for achieving success, as well as autonomy in her professional life as a famed artist. Some of the questions that the author raises are: How did Carriera manage to build up her career? How did she run her business and organize her own workshop? What kind of artist was Carriera? Finally, what do her self-portraits reveal in terms of self-enactment and possibly autobiographical turning points?

Silverpoint, and metalpoint more generally, is the practice of marking with soft metal on a specifically prepared drawing surface. Practiced for centuries, the artform is experiencing a resurgence in recent years, with contemporary work exploring abstract as well as realist, conceptual as well as traditional.Silverpoint and Metalpoint Drawing is the essential manual of metalpoint technique, written by Susan Schwalb and Tom Mazzullo, contemporary masters of the medium. This book is the first treatise on the subject for artists and art teachers with chapters on early history, materials including grounds, supports, metals, and tools, techniques for working in metalpoint as well as mixed media, and finally, the care of metalpoint works. Not only beautifully illustrated, this book also demonstrates how to photograph and exhibit metalpoint art. Featuring a gallery of drawings by contemporary artists, along with their tips and insight, Silverpoint and Metalpoint Drawing is a perfect introduction for students of the medium and an inspiration for those already more familiar with it.

Cabinets of prints and drawings are found in the earliest art collections of Early Modern Europe. From the sixteenth century onwards, some of them acquired such fame that the necessity for an ordered and scientific display meant that a dedicated keeper was occasionally employed to ensure that fellow enthusiasts, as well as visiting diplomats, courtiers and artists, might have access to the print room. Often collected and displayed together with drawings, the prints formed a substantial part of princely collections which sometimes achieved astounding longevity as a specialised group of collectibles, such as the Florentine Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi (GDSU).Prints and drawings, both bought and commissioned, were collected by princes and by private amateurs. Like the rest of their collections, the prints and drawings were usually preserved and displayed as part of, or near, the owner's library in close proximity to scientific instruments, cut gems or small sculptural works of art. Both prints and drawings not only documented an encyclopaedic approach to the knowledge available at the time, but also depicted parts of the collections in the form of a paper museum. Prints and drawings also served as a guide to the collections. They spread their fame, and the renown of their owners, across Europe and into new worlds of collecting, both East and West.This volume explores issues such as: when, how and why did cabinets of prints and drawings become a specialised part of princely and private collections? How important were collections of prints and drawings for the self-representation of a prince or connoisseur among specialists and social peers? Is the presentation of a picture hanging in a gallery, for example by Charles Eisen for the Royal Galleries at Dresden, to be treated as documentary evidence? Are there notable differences in the approach to collecting, presentation and preservation of prints and drawings in diverse parts of the world? What was the afterlife of such collections up to the present day?

The 2nd edition of The Care of Prints and Drawings provides practical, straightforward advice to those responsible for the preservation of works on paper, ranging from curators, facility managers, conservators, registrars, collection care specialists, private collectors, artists, or students of museum studies, visual arts, art history, or conservation. A greater emphasis is placed on preventive conservation, a trend among collecting institutions, which reflects the growing recognition that scarce resources are best expended on preventing deterioration, rather than on less effective measures of reversing it. Expanded and richly illustrated chapters include:Supports for Prints and Drawings discusses the properties of parchment and paper and introduces the general preservation needs and conservation problems of all works on paper, regardless of their media. Conservation Problems Related to the Paper Support of Prints and Drawings presents a guide to recognizing the symptoms and diagnosing the causes of damage specific to paper. Conservation Problems Related to the Materials and Techniques of Prints describes the conservation problems that affect certain printmaking materials and arise from specific processes. Conservation Problems Related to the Materials and Techniques of Drawings focuses on the various materials used to create marks on paper. Item-Level Collection Protection: Envelopes, Sleeves, Folders, Enclosures, Mats, Boxes, Frames, and Furniture, discusses measures taken for prints and drawings so that they can better withstand the rigors of handling, examination, exhibition, travel, and adverse environmental conditions.Preventive Conservation for Prints and Drawings describes how the integration of a comprehensive Collections Care Program into a Collections Management Policy can reduce the need for item-level conservation treatments. Basic Paper Conservation Procedures provides instructions on how to stabilize damaged works.How to Make Starch Paste and Methyl Cellulose Adhesive and Suppliers of Paper Conservation Materials and Equipment are appended as well as a Glossary.