Best of
Material-Culture

2015

Celts: Art and Identity


Julia Farley - 2015
    Furthermore, Celtic art is one of Europe's great artistic traditions, with the skills of Celtic craftspeople standing alongside the best of the ancient and medieval worlds.But who were the Celts? Recent research and new archaeological discoveries are continuing to transform our understanding of the idea of the Celts - a subject involving much controversy and academic debate since the late 1990s. Drawing on the latest scholarship, the authors explore how the Celts have been defined differently from ancient times to the modern day, by people with different perspectives and agendas. They look, too, at what is meant by Celtic art, from its origins c.500 BC in western Europe, through its transformations and revivals in the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, to its rediscovery in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over 250 remarkable objects have been selected from the collections of the British Museum, the National Museums of Scotland and other key European museums to richly illustrate the narrative and highlight the artistic accomplishments of craftspeople through the centuries. Here are iconic, intricately decorated masterpieces as well as less well-known fixtures and fittings; items of warfare and adornment; the ceremonial and the utilitarian.

This World


Teddy Macker - 2015
    Within these pages, Macker also chronicles the journey inside the whale, telling us not just of fear and trembling but also of the magnificent harps only found in the belly of the beast. By turns ecological, erotic, compassionate, and mystical, these poems return us to “this world, the kingdom we’ve been looking for.”

Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith: Catalogue Raisonn�, Volume I


Andrew Lampert - 2015
    Smith's kaleidoscopic experimental films have influenced generations of artists and cinephiles, while his landmark three-volume compilation, the "Anthology of American Folk Music" (1952), laid the foundation for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to his ecstatic artwork, Smith is renowned for his vast collections of curious objects. "The Collections of Harry Smith, Catalogue Raisonné" series spotlights and indexes his eclectic research obsessions.Volume one features richly detailed photographic documentation of 251 paper airplanes gathered by Smith from the streets of New York City over an approximately 20-year period. Whimsical and weird, the paper airplanes rank among Smith's most mysterious collecting pursuits. This extensive compendium presents the fruits of his extraordinary aeronautic pursuit and highlights the tangled history and myths that accompany them.

String Figures (The Collections of Harry Smith: Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II)


Andrew Lampert - 2015
    This immersive volume contains photographs of the extant mounted string figures created by Smith alongside interviews, film stills and selections from his unpublished anthropological research. Additional contextual materials include an introductory essay and a conversation between musician, photographer and filmmaker John Cohen, a longtime colleague of Smith, and painter Terry Winters.

Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear


Lucy Adlington - 2015
    Starting with underwear – did you know Elizabeth I owned just one pair of drawers, worn only after her death? – she moves garment by garment through Western attire, exploring both the items we still wear every day and those that have gone the way of the dodo (sugared petticoats, farthingales and spatterdashers to name but a few).Beautifully illustrated throughout, and crammed with fascinating and eminently quotable facts, Stitches in Time shows how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers us the chance to truly appreciate the extraordinary qualities of these, our most ordinary possessions.

Drawn With Spirit: Fraktur from the Joan and Victor Johnson Collection


Lisa Minardi - 2015
    This publication makes a landmark contribution to the study of Pennsylvania German fraktur, and offers the most comprehensive study of the topic in over 50 years. The featured objects, most of which have never been published, accompany significant new information about the artists who made these works and the people who owned them. An introductory essay sets the renowned Johnson Collection within the context of collecting and scholarship on Pennsylvania German folk art and then highlights major new discoveries, including connections between fraktur and related examples of furniture and prints. An interview with the collectors offers valuable insights into the formation of this special group of objects, which includes birth and baptismal certificates, bookplates, religious texts, writing samples, house blessings, cutworks, and printed broadsides. The splendid color illustrations reveal schools of artistic and regional influence, giving a nuanced understanding of how artists took inspiration from one another and how designs were transferred to new locations. Detailed catalogue entries include extensive information about each piece as well as complete translations.Lisa Minardi is an assistant curator at Winterthur Museum and a specialist in Pennsylvania German art and culture.