Their interpretation has tended to take two divergent forms: the scientific and the humanistic. In this innovative study, Joanna Sofaer Derevenski argues that these approaches are unnecessarily polarized and that one should not be pursued without the other. Exploring key themes such as sex, gender, life cycle and diet, she argues that the body is both biological object and cultural site and is not easily detached from the objects, practices and landscapes that surround it.

    Perhaps this is the art of the twenty-first century.”—Michael Bonesteel, The Outsider“A wonderful book…”—David Bowie“(A) fascinating, timely book.”—Publishers Weekly“Recommended for all art collections.”—Library JournalOriginally a landmark exhibition at the American Visionary Art Museum, The End is Near! presents the largest collection of visionary art ever assembled on the subjects of Apocalypse, Millennium, and Utopia. With essays by Stephen Jay Gould, Reverend Howard Finster, Adam Parfrey, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Book Award.

    This book, the first of its kind, examines Stuart England through the mirror of dress. It argues that both artistic and literary sources can be read and decoded for important information on dress and the way it was perceived in a period of immense political, social, and cultural change.Focusing on the rich visual culture of the seventeenth century, including portraits, engravings, fashion plates, and sculpture, and on literary sources—poetry, drama, essays, sermons—the distinguished historian of dress Aileen Ribeiro creates a fascinating account of Stuart dress and how it both reflected and influenced society. Supported by a wealth of illustrative images, she explores such varied themes as court costumes, the masque, the ways in which political and religious ideologies could be expressed in dress, and the importance of London as a fashion center. This beautiful book is an indispensable and authoritative account of what people wore and how it related to Stuart England’s cultural climate.

    The volume explores key themes in historical archaeology including documentary archaeology, the writing of historical archaeology, colonialism, capitalism, industrial archaeology, maritime archaeology, cultural resource management and urban archaeology. Three special sections explore the distinctive contributions of material culture studies, landscape archaeology and the archaeology of buildings and the household. Drawing on case studies from North America, Europe, Australasia, Africa and around the world, the volume captures the breadth and diversity of contemporary historical archaeology, considers archaeology's relationship with history, cultural anthropology and other periods of archaeological study, and provides clear introductions to alternative conceptions of the field. This book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching the material remains of the recent past.

    Written especially for this work in lively and accessible language, the essays illuminate what visual forms—including traditional crafts, sculpture, painting and graphic arts, even domestic and museum interiors—can tell us about social conditions, how visual culture has contributed to social values, and how concepts of high and low art have developed. The only work on visual culture to span American history from the early republic to the present and to delve into issues from ethnicity to geography, Seeing High and Low allows readers to follow the evolution of concepts of “high” and “low” art as well as to gain new insight into American history. Arranged roughly chronologically, these generously illustrated essays explore topics including the formative role of visual images in the process of class stratification in the Early Republic; the contribution of media images and paintings to debates on environmental crises, race relations, and urbanization in the late nineteenth century; and the difficulties of engaging with social issues while employing a modernist vocabulary.

    Illustrated with hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, the book examines much admired and sought-after ceramics (such as crocks, face jugs, bowls, churns, and garden pottery) appreciated the world over for their originality, beauty, and utility. The book’s publication coincides with a major exhibition of Alabama folk pottery curated by Brackner and set to open at the Birmingham Museum of Art September 30, 2006.   This volume places historic Alabama pottery making into a national and international context and describes the technologies that distinguish Alabama potters from the rest of the southeast. It explains how a blending and borrowing among cultural groups that settled the state nurtured its rich regional traditions. In addition to providing a detailed discussion of pottery types, clays, glazes, slips, and firing methods, Alabama Folk Pottery presents a geographic survey of the state’s pottery regions with a comprehensive list of Alabama folk potters, historic and contemporary—a valuable resource for collectors, scholars, and curators.   Most important, in the pages and photographs of Alabama Folk Pottery, Brackner introduces—largely through their own words—the dynamic communities and families of Alabama potters who have carefully and proudly passed on their methods and styles from generation to generation. As Mobile archaeologist Greg Waselkov declares, “Alabama Folk Pottery reveals the humanity behind the artistry and the technical sophistication of this historic craft. Starting with magnificent ceramic churns, jugs, braziers, and grave markers found today largely in museums and private collections, this book pieces together the story of the talented men and women who have transformed Alabama clay into objects of great functionality, beauty, and personal expression.

    Charles and Boonville, Missouri. In this magnificent book, which includes some six hundred photographs and drawings, Charles van Ravenswaay examines that immigration—who came, how, and why—and surveys the distinctive Missouri-German architecture, art, and crafts produced in the towns or on the farms of the rural counties of Cooper, Cole, Osage, Gasconade, Franklin, Montgomery, Warren, and St. Charles from the 1830s until the closing years of the century.As the immigrants sought to transplant their native culture to the Missouri backwoods, the compromises they were forced to make with conditions in Missouri produced many fascinating and individualistic structures and objects. They built half-timbered, stone, and brick houses and barns with designs reflecting the traditions of the many German regions from which the builders emigrated. The author’s far-reaching study of immigrants’ arts and crafts included furniture in traditional peasant designs as well as the Biedermeier and eclectic styles, redware and stoneware pottery, textiles, wood and stone carving, metalwares, firearms, baskets, musical instruments, prints, and paintings and identifies craftsmen working in all of these fields. One chapter is devoted to the objects the immigrants brought with them from the Old World.Added to this new printing of The Arts and Architecture of German Settlements in Missouri is a touching and informative introduction by Adolf E. Schroeder. Schroeder’s long friendship with Charles van Ravenswaay allows him to reflect on the vast contributions this author made to our knowledge of Missouri’s German culture. Everyone interested in architecture, crafts, or Missouriana will find this book indispensable as they savor van Ravenswaay’s excellent presentation of the craftsmen and their products against the background of the aspirations and folkways of a distinctive culture.

    The Handbook of Material Culture provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains, and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of "things." This cutting-edge work examines the current state of material culture as well as how this field of study may be extended and developed in the future.

    This book is a guide to the identification of the embossed, patent and proprietary medicine bottles produced in an era of American history when anything could be bottled, advertised and sold - legally. A cornucopia of cures, bitters, tonics, and balms, many of them little more and slightly disguised alcohol, were available to the gullible but willing public. Not only are the embossed and shapely bottles of this era highly collectable today, they are also valuable to archaeologists who interpret and date historical sites. This book has been designed as a reference book. It provided detailed descriptions to aid the researcher in identifying and evaluating whole or fragmented vessels. A discussion of the patent and proprietary medicine years, and the innovations applied to the production of glass, is followed by a brief interpretation of bottles by color, design and shape. Over 40 chapters detail nearly four thousand medicine bottles. Numerous line drawings, and color photographs will aid the researcher/collector/anthropologist in the identification process. Richard Fike, is a retired Bureau of Land Management Archaeologist. Rich is also an historian, writer, teacher and the developer of the Museum of the Mountain West of Montrose, Colorado. He continues to expand the Museum, which contains original and recreated historic buildings that house extensive collections of America's past. He has combined his professional knowledge and his personal interest in historic bottles to provide this authoritative, definitive, and entertaining guide.

    Over a short span of years important matters began to turn on the cut of a sleeve. Fashion influenced consumption and provided a stimulus that drove demand for goods and turned wealthy townspeople into enthusiastic consumers. Making wise decisions about the alarmingly expensive goods that composed a fashionable wardrobe became a matter of pressing concern, especially when the market caught on and became awash in cheaper editions of luxury wares.Focusing on the luxury trade in fashionable wear and accessories in Venice, Florence, and other towns in Italy, Gilding the Market investigates a major shift in patterns of consumption at the height of medieval prosperity, which, more remarkably, continued through the subsequent era of plague, return of plague, and increased warfare. A fine sensitivity to the demands of le pompe, that is, the public display of private wealth, infected town life. The quest for luxuries affected markets by enlarging exchange activity and encouraging retail trades. As both consumers and tradesmen, local goldsmiths, long-distance traders, bankers, and money changers played important roles in creating this new age of fashion.In response to a greater public display of luxury goods, civic sumptuary laws were written to curb spending and extreme fashion, but these were aimed at women, youth, and children, leaving townsmen largely unrestricted in their consumption. With erudition, grace, and an evocative selection of illustrations, some reproduced in full color, Susan Mosher Stuard explores the arrival of fashion in European history.

    But two of the towns vanished in a matter of years, and many of the activities and lifestyles that shaped them were almost entirely forgotten. In The Sangamo Frontier, archaeologist Robert Mazrim unearths the buried history of this early American community, breathing new life into a region that still rests in Lincoln’s shadow. Named after a shallow river that cuts through the prairies of central Illinois, the Sangamo Country—an area that now encompasses the capital city of Springfield and present-day Sangamon County—was first colonized after the War of 1812. For the past fifteen years, Mazrim has conducted dozens of excavations there, digging up pieces of pioneer life, from hand-forged iron and locally made crockery to pewter spoons and Staffordshire teacups. And here, in beautifully illustrated stories of each dig, he shows how each of these small artifacts can teach us something about the lifestyles of people who lived on the frontier nearly two hundred years ago. Allowing us to see past the changed modern landscape and the clichés of pioneer history, Mazrim deftly uses his findings to portray the homes, farms, taverns, and pottery shops where Lincoln’s neighbors once lived and worked. Drawing readers into the thrill of discovery, The Sangamo Frontier inaugurates a new kind of archaeological history that both enhances and challenges our written history. It imbues today’s landscape with an authentic ghostliness that will reawaken the curiosity of anyone interested in the forgotten people and places that helped shape our nation.

    This comprehensive resource for collectors is a complete visual guide to the history of the decorative arts from furniture and ceramics to glass, silver and metalware, and textiles.

    Lavishly illustrated, this eclectic and lively collection of essays by historians, art historians, and literary scholars examines the many ways furniture of this period reflects the complex social and cultural issues that shaped this century in both Europe and America. In addition to furniture and portraiture, this diverse compilation considers literature, account books, and handbooks, allowing for a revealing look at how these furnishings created, contested, and subverted their cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, these essays make the past come alive, showing us what made this furniture meaningful in its own time, and why it is still meaningful today.