Material Culture of Art and Design – serie

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by Édouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi 'brotherhood'.Coined by contemporary critics, 'intimisme' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard's paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard's studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister's privacy and to his mother's subjectivity?Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women's familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry's extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by Édouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi ''brotherhood''.Coined by contemporary critics, ''intimisme'' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard''s paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard''s studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister''s privacy and to his mother''s subjectivity?Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women''s familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry''s extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by Édouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi ''brotherhood''.Coined by contemporary critics, ''intimisme'' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard''s paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard''s studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister''s privacy and to his mother''s subjectivity?Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women''s familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry''s extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by Édouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi 'brotherhood'.Coined by contemporary critics, 'intimisme' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard's paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard's studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister's privacy and to his mother's subjectivity?Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women's familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry's extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as “glamor” and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as “glamor” and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as “glamor” and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as “glamor” and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead’s relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead''s relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art is the first edited volume to critically examine uses of lead as both material and cultural signifier in modern and contemporary art. The book analyzes the work of a diverse group of artists working in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, and takes into account the ways in which gender, race, and class can affect the cultural perception of lead.Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of international contributors across various fields, this volume explores lead''s relevance from a number of perspectives, including art history, technical art history, art criticism, and curatorial studies. Drawing on current art historical concerns with materiality, this volume builds on recent exhibitions and scholarship that reconsider the role of materials in shaping artistic meaning, thus giving a central relevance to the object and its physicality.

How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters such as Chardin, as well as sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience.The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.

How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters such as Chardin, as well as sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience.The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.

How do our senses help us to understand the world? This question, which preoccupied Enlightenment thinkers in Western Europe, also emerged as a key theme in depictions of animals in eighteenth-century art. This book examines the ways in which painters, sculptors, porcelain modelers, and other decorative designers portrayed animals as sensing subjects who physically confirmed the value of material experience. The independent agency of animals with their own right to free existence, a topic of growing urgency in our own era, emerges in striking and often surprising ways within this early nexus of artistic experimentation.The sensual style known today as the Rococo encouraged the proliferation of animals as exemplars of empirical inquiry in the eighteenth century, ranging from the popular subject of the monkey artist to the alchemical wonders of the life-sized porcelain animals created for the Saxon court. Examining writings on sensory knowledge by La Mettre, Condillac, Diderot and other philosophers side by side with depictions of the animal in art, Cohen argues that artists promoted the animal as a sensory, thinking subject while also validating the material basis of their own professional practice.

This book considers questions of materiality and painting, focalized through the notoriously obscure work of Georges Rouault, and offers an innovative critical approach to the various questions raised by this challenging modernist. Described as a difficult and dark painter, Rouault’s oeuvre is deeply experimental. Images of the circus emerge from a plethora of chaotic marks, while numerous landscapes appear as if ossified in thick paint.Rouault’s work explodes the genre of painting, drawing upon the residue of Gustave Moreau’s symbolism, the extremities of Fauvism, and the radical theatrical experiments of Alfred Jarry. The repetitions and re-workings at the heart of Rouault’s process defy conventional chronological treatment, and place the emphasis upon the coming-into-being of the work of art. Ultimately, the book reveals the process of making as both a search for understanding and a response to the problematic world of the 20th century.

Things change. Broken and restored, reused and remade, objects transcend their earliest functions, locations, and appearances. While every era witnesses change, the eighteenth century experienced artistic, economic, and demographic transformations that exerted unique pressures on material cultures around the world. Locating material objects at the heart of such phenomena, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century expands beyond Eurocentric perspectives to discover the mobile, transcultural nature of eighteenth-century art worlds. From porcelain to betel leaves, Chumash hats to natural history cabinets, this book examines how objects embody imperialism, knowledge, and resistance in various ways.By embracing things both elite and everyday, this volume investigates physical and technological manipulations of objects while attending to the human agents who shaped them in an era of accelerating global contact and conquest. Featuring ten essays, the volume foregrounds diverse scholarly approaches to chart new directions for art history and cultural history. Ranging from California to China, Bengal to Britain, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century illuminates the transformations within and between artistic media, follows natural and human-made things as they migrate across territories, and reveals how objects catalyzed change in the transoceanic worlds of the early modern period.

Things change. Broken and restored, reused and remade, objects transcend their earliest functions, locations, and appearances. While every era witnesses change, the eighteenth century experienced artistic, economic, and demographic transformations that exerted unique pressures on material cultures around the world. Locating material objects at the heart of such phenomena, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century expands beyond Eurocentric perspectives to discover the mobile, transcultural nature of eighteenth-century art worlds. From porcelain to betel leaves, Chumash hats to natural history cabinets, this book examines how objects embody imperialism, knowledge, and resistance in various ways. By embracing things both elite and everyday, this volume investigates physical and technological manipulations of objects while attending to the human agents who shaped them in an era of accelerating global contact and conquest. Featuring ten essays, the volume foregrounds diverse scholarly approaches to chart new directions for art history and cultural history. Ranging from California to China, Bengal to Britain, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century illuminates the transformations within and between artistic media, follows natural and human-made things as they migrate across territories, and reveals how objects catalyzed change in the transoceanic worlds of the early modern period.

Things change. Broken and restored, reused and remade, objects transcend their earliest functions, locations, and appearances. While every era witnesses change, the eighteenth century experienced artistic, economic, and demographic transformations that exerted unique pressures on material cultures around the world. Locating material objects at the heart of such phenomena, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century expands beyond Eurocentric perspectives to discover the mobile, transcultural nature of eighteenth-century art worlds. From porcelain to betel leaves, Chumash hats to natural history cabinets, this book examines how objects embody imperialism, knowledge, and resistance in various ways. By embracing things both elite and everyday, this volume investigates physical and technological manipulations of objects while attending to the human agents who shaped them in an era of accelerating global contact and conquest. Featuring ten essays, the volume foregrounds diverse scholarly approaches to chart new directions for art history and cultural history. Ranging from California to China, Bengal to Britain, Material Cultures of the Global Eighteenth Century illuminates the transformations within and between artistic media, follows natural and human-made things as they migrate across territories, and reveals how objects catalyzed change in the transoceanic worlds of the early modern period.

From porcelain to betel leaves, Chumash hats to natural history cabinets, this book examines how objects embody imperialism, knowledge, and resistance in various ways. While every era witnesses change, the eighteenth century experienced artistic, economic, and demographic transformations that exerted unique pressures on material cultures around the world. Featuring ten essays from leading historians of British, Spanish, and West African art, this global survey brings a fresh approach to the study of eighteenth century material culture, foregrounding cultural connections, translation, and movement over static and rooted perspectives. Each chapter takes a diverse scholarly approach, identifying a specific historical example of early modern transnationalism, and engages with a number of dynamic fields of enquiry and practice, ranging from material culture and ecocriticism, through to global history and decolonization. Underpinned by case studies which feature objects and practices that span Asia, Europe, Australasia Africa and North America, the book expands beyond Eurocentric perspectives to discover the mobile, transcultural nature of eighteenth-century art worlds.Ranging from California to China, Bengal to Britain, this timely book illuminates the transformations within and between artistic media, follows natural and human-made things as they migrate across territories, and reveals how objects catalyzed change in the transoceanic worlds of the early modern period. Going beyond Eurocentric perspectives, it reveals the innate mobility and transculturality of eighteenth-century art worlds; charting new directions for global art history and cultural history of the period.

The term ‘jar’ refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms.The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space.Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

The term ''jar'' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space. Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

The term ''jar'' refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space. Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

The term ‘jar’ refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms.The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space.Transformative Jars brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history and anthropology to offer perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users and collectors, this book presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.

Available as an Open Access publication, Intimate Interiors explores how a growing desire for individual expression, the concealment of domestic labor and enslavement, and an increasing appetite for comfort and solace reshaped eighteenth-century interiors. By examining architectural, visual, and material culture, the book foregrounds the interconnected roles of intimacy, privacy, informality, and sociability in shaping the period’s increasingly specialized domestic spaces.Across eleven innovative chapters that explore issues of gender, politics, travel, exoticism, imperialism, sensorial experiences, identity, interiority, and modernity, this volume demonstrates how intimacy was a fundamental goal in the planning of private quarters. In doing so, the political nature of private spaces is uncovered, whilst highlighting the contradictions and complexities of these highly performative “private” interiors. Employing distinct methodological perspectives across various geographical sites, from Turkey to Versailles, Britain to Benin, Intimate Interiors draws as-yet untraced connections between Enlightenment Europe, imperial outposts, and major metropolitan centers across the globe.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Vanderbilt University.

Available as an Open Access publication, Intimate Interiors explores how a growing desire for individual expression, the concealment of domestic labor and enslavement, and an increasing appetite for comfort and solace reshaped eighteenth-century interiors. By examining architectural, visual, and material culture, the book foregrounds the interconnected roles of intimacy, privacy, informality, and sociability in shaping the period’s increasingly specialized domestic spaces.Across eleven innovative chapters that explore issues of gender, politics, travel, exoticism, imperialism, sensorial experiences, identity, interiority, and modernity, this volume demonstrates how intimacy was a fundamental goal in the planning of private quarters. In doing so, the political nature of private spaces is uncovered, whilst highlighting the contradictions and complexities of these highly performative “private” interiors. Employing distinct methodological perspectives across various geographical sites, from Turkey to Versailles, Britain to Benin, Intimate Interiors draws as-yet untraced connections between Enlightenment Europe, imperial outposts, and major metropolitan centers across the globe.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Vanderbilt University.

Longlisted for the Historians of British Art Book Prize 2023The 18th century has been hailed for its revolution in consumer culture, but Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain repositions Britain as a nation of makers. It brings new attention to 18th-century craftswomen and men with its focus on the material knowledge possessed not only by professional artisans and amateur makers, but also by skilled consumers. This book gathers together a group of interdisciplinary scholars working in the fields of art history, history, literature and museum studies to unearth the tactile and tacit knowledge that underpinned fashion, tailoring and textile production. It invites us into the workshops, drawing rooms and backrooms of a broad range of creators, and uncovers how production and manual knowledge extended beyond the factories and machines which dominate industrial histories.This book illuminates, for the first time, the material literacies learnt, enacted and understood by British producers and consumers. The skills required for sewing, embroidering and the textile arts were possessed by a large proportion of the British population: men, women and children, professional and amateur alike. Building on previous studies of shoppers and consumption in the period, as well as narratives of manufacture, this collection documents the multiplicity of small producers behind Britain’s consumer revolution, reshaping our understanding of the dynamics between making and objects, consumption and production. It demonstrates how material knowledge formed an essential part of daily life for eighteenth-century Britons. Craft technique, practice and production, the contributors show, constituted forms of tactile languages that joined makers together, whether they produced objects for profit or pleasure.

This book broadens the discussion of pottery and china in the Victorian era by situating them in the national, imperial, design reform, and domestic debates between 1840 and 1890. Largely ignored in recent scholarship, Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature argues that the signification of a pot, a jug, or a tableware pattern can be more fully discerned in written and painted representations.Across five case studies, the book explores a rhetoric and set of conventions that developed within the representation of ceramics, emerging in the late-18th century, and continuing in the Victorian period. Each case study begins with a textual passage exemplifying the outlined theme and closes with an object analysis to demonstrate how the fusing of text, image, and object are critical to attaining the period eye in order to better understand the metaphorical meanings of ceramics.Essential reading not only for ceramics scholars, but also those of material culture, the book mines the rich and diverse archive of Victorian painting and literature, from the avant-garde to the sentimental, from the well-known to the more obscure, to shed light on the at once complex and simple implications of ceramics’ agencies at this time.

This book broadens the discussion of pottery and china in the Victorian era by situating them in the national, imperial, design reform, and domestic debates between 1840 and 1890. Largely ignored in recent scholarship, Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature argues that the signification of a pot, a jug, or a tableware pattern can be more fully discerned in written and painted representations.Across five case studies, the book explores a rhetoric and set of conventions that developed within the representation of ceramics, emerging in the late-18th century, and continuing in the Victorian period. Each case study begins with a textual passage exemplifying the outlined theme and closes with an object analysis to demonstrate how the fusing of text, image, and object are critical to attaining the period eye in order to better understand the metaphorical meanings of ceramics.Essential reading not only for ceramics scholars, but also those of material culture, the book mines the rich and diverse archive of Victorian painting and literature, from the avant-garde to the sentimental, from the well-known to the more obscure, to shed light on the at once complex and simple implications of ceramics'' agencies at this time.

This book broadens the discussion of pottery and china in the Victorian era by situating them in the national, imperial, design reform, and domestic debates between 1840 and 1890. Largely ignored in recent scholarship, Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature argues that the signification of a pot, a jug, or a tableware pattern can be more fully discerned in written and painted representations.Across five case studies, the book explores a rhetoric and set of conventions that developed within the representation of ceramics, emerging in the late-18th century, and continuing in the Victorian period. Each case study begins with a textual passage exemplifying the outlined theme and closes with an object analysis to demonstrate how the fusing of text, image, and object are critical to attaining the period eye in order to better understand the metaphorical meanings of ceramics.Essential reading not only for ceramics scholars, but also those of material culture, the book mines the rich and diverse archive of Victorian painting and literature, from the avant-garde to the sentimental, from the well-known to the more obscure, to shed light on the at once complex and simple implications of ceramics'' agencies at this time.