Gems in the Early Modern World
Gems in the Early Modern World

Author: Michael Bycroft

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 3319963791

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This edited collection is an interdisciplinary study of gems in the early modern world. It examines the relations between the art, science, and technology of gems, and it does so against the backdrop of an expanding global trade in gems. The eleven chapters are organised into three parts. The first part sets the scene by describing how gems moved around the early modern world, how they were set in motion, and how they were pulled together in the course of their travels. The second part is about value. It asks why people valued gems, how they determined the value of a given gem, and how the value of a gem was connected to its perceived place of origin. The third part deals with the skills involved in cutting, polishing, and mounting gems, and how these skills were transmitted and articulated by artisans. The common themes of all these chapters are materials, knowledge and global trade. The contributors to this volume focus on the material properties of gems such as their weight and hardness, on the knowledge involved in exchanging them and valuing them, and on the cultural consequences of the expanding trade in gems in Eurasia and the Americas.

Luxury in Global Perspective
Luxury in Global Perspective

Author: Karin Hofmeester

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1107108322

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Machine generated contents note: Luxury and global history Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester; 1. Precious things in motion: luxury and the circulation of jewels in Mughal India Kim Siebenhuner; 2. Diamonds as a global luxury commodity Karin Hofmeester; 3. Gold in twentieth-century India - a luxury? Bernd-Stefan Grewe; 4. Chinese porcelain local and global context: the imperial connection Anne Gerritsen; 5. Luxury or commodity? The success of Indian cotton cloth in the first global age Giorgio Riello; 6. The gendered luxury of wax prints in South Ghana: a local luxury good with global roots Silvia Ruschak; 7. From Venice to East Africa: history, uses and meanings of glass beads Karin Pallaver; 8. Imports and autarky: tortoiseshell in early modern Japan Martha Chaiklin; 9. Tickling and klicking the ivories - the metamorphosis of a global commodity in the nineteenth century Jonas Kranzer; 10. The conservation of luxury: safari hunting and the consumption of wildlife in twentieth-century East Africa Bernhard Gissibl; 11. Luxury as a global phenomenon: concluding remarks Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester