Best of
Material-Culture

1993

The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning


James Edward Young - 1993
    This fascinating work by James E. Young examines Holocaust monuments and museums in Europe, Israel, and America, exploring how every nation remembers the Holocaust according to its own traditions, ideals, and experiences, and how these memorials reflect their place in contemporary aesthetic and architectural discourse. The result is a groundbreaking study of Holocaust memory, public art, and their fusion in contemporary life.Among the issues Young discusses are: how memorials suppress as much as they commemorate; how museums tell as much about their makers as about events; the differences between memorials conceived by victims and by victimizers; and the political uses and abuses of officially cast memory. Young describes, for example, Germany's "counter monuments," one of which was designed to disappear over time, and the Polish memorials that commemorate the whole of Polish destruction through the figure of its murdered Jewish part. He compares European museums and monuments that focus primarily on the internment and killing process with Israeli memorials that include portrayals of Jewish life before and after the destruction. In his concluding chapters, he finds that American Holocaust memorials are guided no less by distinctly American ideals, such as liberty and pluralism.Interweaving graceful prose and arresting photographs, the book is eloquent testimony to the way varied cultures and nations commemorate an era that breeds guilt, shame, pain, and amnesia, but rarely pride. By reinvigorating these memorials with the stories of their origins, Young highlights the ever-changing life of memory over its seemingly frozen face in the landscape.

The New Fine Points of Furniture: Early American: The Good, Better, Best, Superior, Masterpiece


Albert Sack - 1993
    When Albert Sack's Fine Points of Furniture: Early American--Good, Better, Best was published in 1950, it established a new standard for evaluating American antiques. In his new book, Sack applies this standard to furniture pieces that have appeared on the market in more recent years. Full color and black-and-white photographs.

Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850


Betty Ring - 1993
    612 illustrations, 350 in full color.

Great and Noble Jar: Traditional Stoneware of South Carolina


Cinda K. Baldwin - 1993
    Folklorist Cinda K. Baldwin examines not only many traditional pottery forms but also the methods by which they were thrown, glazed, decorated, and fired.Among the topics on which Baldwin focuses are the contributions of slaves and freed blacks to the pottery industry, including the remarkable work of the potter named Dave, who marked his wares with brief verse inscriptions, including this one found on a large food-storage container: “Great & Noble Jar, / hold sheep, goat, and bear.”The book is illustrated with nearly two hundred photographs (including fifteen color plates), maps, and drawings and includes an index of South Carolina potters.

Glass in Early America


Arlene Palmer - 1993
    Opening with a survey of glassmaking in Europe and the colonies, the author provides a brief history of the acquisition of glass by Henry Francis du Pont whose massive 1500-piece collection at the Winterthur Museum is the basis for this book. Du Pont began collecting glass in 1919 and did so until his death in 1969.

Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women


Roberta Gilchrist - 1993
    Gender in medieval monasticism influenced landscape contexts and strategies of economic management, the form and development of buildings and their symbolic and iconographic content. Women's religious experience was often poorly documented, but their archaeology indicates a shared tradition which was closely linked with, and valued by local communities. The distinctive patterns observed suggest that gender is essential to archaeological analysis.

Eighteenth-Century Decoration: Design and the Domestic Interior in England


Charles Saumarez Smith - 1993
    First edition, over sized, comprehensive survey of English decorative arts in the 18th century beautiful full color plates, 400 pages