Blueprint
Blueprint

Author: Stephen Werner

Publisher: Summa Publications, Inc.

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780917786969

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The 2,569 engraved plates of the Encyclopedie are as central to its meaning as the articles or cross-references themselves. Plates change the discourse of "encyclopedisme" through a novel collaborative effort of written texts and pictures. With vignettes of Paris as their backdrop, they endorse an aesthetic of urban merveilleux. Ultimately they rewrite the encyclopedia genre. The Encyclopedie is far more than a traditional "illustrated" reference work; it is a modern pictorial encyclopedia. Its visionary or "blueprint" qualities are unique and were conceived by Diderot, the chief sponsor and architect of the plates. This work is richly illustrated with reproductions of the original plates. An exhaustive bibliography adds to the functional nature of this study. "Un petit livre tres excitant." --Dix-huitieme Siecle. "...this study is a fruitful examination of the Encyclopedie as an indisputable coherent fusion of the textual and the pictorial. It points the way to further investigation of what still remains a largely unexplored labyrinth of Enlightenment ideologies, values and concerns." --British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot

Author: Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-08-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780226134765

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes.

When Technology Fails
When Technology Fails

Author: Matthew R. Stein

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 1933392452

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There's never been a better time to "be prepared." Matthew Stein's comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills--from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills--prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live "green" in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown, or environmental catastrophe. When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You'll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you've been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You'll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You'll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter (a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine, and healing; energy, heat, and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines, and materials) offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad. Fully revised and expanded--the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously--When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels.

Luxury Arts of the Renaissance
Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Author: Marina Belozerskaya

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0892367857

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

Furness Iron
Furness Iron

Author: Mark Bowden

Publisher: English Heritage

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1848021550

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Furness and the neighbouring parts of southern and western Cumbria had a lively and significant iron industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, growing out of a tradition of ironworking stretching back to the medieval period and probably much earlier.

The Book of Looms
The Book of Looms

Author: Eric Broudy

Publisher: Brandeis University Press

Published: 2021-09-29

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 168458082X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A heavily illustrated classic on the evolution of the handloom. The handloom—often no more than a bundle of sticks and a few lengths of cordage—has been known to almost all cultures for thousands of years. Eric Broudy places the wide variety of handlooms in their historical context. What influenced their development? How did they travel from one geographic area to another? Were they invented independently by different cultures? How have modern cultures improved on ancient weaving skills and methods? Broudy shows how virtually every culture has woven on handlooms. He highlights the incredible technical achievement of early cultures that created magnificent textiles with the crudest of tools and demonstrates that modern technology has done nothing to surpass their skill or inventiveness.

Technology and Cultural Values
Technology and Cultural Values

Author: Peter D. Hershock

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2003-10-31

Total Pages: 623

ISBN-13: 0824844963

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Contributors: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Roger T. Ames,Yoko Arisaka, Carl Becker, Francesca Bray, James Buchanan, Arindam Chakrabarti, Frank W. Derringh, Rolf Elberfeld, Charles Ess, Andrew Feenberg, Susantha Goonatilake, H. Jiuan Heng, Peter Hershock, Thomas P. Kasulis, George Khushf, David Farrell Krell, Joel J. Kupperman, William R. LaFleur, Lois Ann Lorentzen, David Loy, Joseph Margolis, Hans-Georg Möller, Robert Cummings Neville, Peimin Ni, Monica Atieno Opole, Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ, Helen Petrovsky, Ramon Sentmartí, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Vasanthi Srinivasan, Marietta Stepaniants, Vyacheslav S. Stiopin, Henk ten Have, Paul B.Thompson, Mary Tiles, David B.Wong.