European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Author: Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide,

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2006-05-30

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0300104847

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This beautifully produced volume is the first to survey the Metropolitan Museum's world-renowned collection of European furniture. One hundred and three superb examples from the Museum's vast holdings are featured. They originated in workshops in England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia, or Spain and date from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. A number of them belonged to such important historical figures as Pope Urban VIII, Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, and Napoleon. The selection includes chairs, tables, beds, cabinets, commodes, settees and sofas, bookcases and standing shelves, desks, fire screens, athéniennes, coffers, chests, mirrors and frames, showcases, and lighting equipment. There is also one purely decorative piece, a superb vase made for a Russian noble family who, according to one awestruck viewer, "owned all the malachite mines in the world." The makers of some of the objects are unknown, but most of the pieces can be identified by label, documentation, or style as the work of an outstanding European designer-craftsman, such as André-Charles Boulle, Thomas Chippendale, David Roentgen, or Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The Tale of Tea
The Tale of Tea

Author: George van Driem

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004386259

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Tale of Tea presents a comprehensive history of tea from prehistoric times to the present day in a single volume, covering the fascinating social history of tea and the origins, botany and biochemistry of this singularly important cultigen.

Broken Idols of the English Reformation
Broken Idols of the English Reformation

Author: Margaret Aston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 1994

ISBN-13: 1316060470

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why were so many religious images and objects broken and damaged in the course of the Reformation? Margaret Aston's magisterial new book charts the conflicting imperatives of destruction and rebuilding throughout the English Reformation from the desecration of images, rails and screens to bells, organs and stained glass windows. She explores the motivations of those who smashed images of the crucifixion in stained glass windows and who pulled down crosses and defaced symbols of the Trinity. She shows that destruction was part of a methodology of religious revolution designed to change people as well as places and to forge in the long term new generations of new believers. Beyond blanked walls and whited windows were beliefs and minds impregnated by new modes of religious learning. Idol-breaking with its emphasis on the treacheries of images fundamentally transformed not only Anglican ways of worship but also of seeing, hearing and remembering.

The Collected Ghost Stories
The Collected Ghost Stories

Author: M. R. James

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-08-01

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Collected Ghost Stories" by M. R. James. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Old Straight Track
The Old Straight Track

Author: Alfred Watkins

Publisher: Little Brown

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780349137070

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

First published in 1925 THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK remains the most important source for the study of ancient tracks or leys that criss-cross the British Isles- a fascinating system which was old when the Romans came to Britain. First in the Herefordshire countryside, and later throughout Britain, Alfred Watkins noticed that beacon hills, mounds, earthworks, moats and old churches built on pagan sites seemed to fall in straight lines. His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star. Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Are they the legacy of a prehistoric scientific knowledge which is now all but lost? And was their purpose secular or religious?

The Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London

Author: Neil Hanson

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2010-01-26

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0470450703

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Acclaim for The Great Fire of London "Popular narrative history at its best, well researched, imaginatively and dramatically written. . . . The author marshals his story and his mass of contemporary quotations with great skill." —Times Literary Supplement "The brilliance of its narrative chapters . . . a marvelous eye for evocative detail. Hanson’s prose is animated by the ferocious energy of the fire and seems to be guided by its inexorable movement. He creates the literary equivalent of the special effects in a disaster movie. . . . A rich mixture of imagination and research." —The Daily Telegraph (London) "He writes with knowledge and verve. As if making a television documentary on a natural disaster, he includes a gripping technical chapter on the mechanism and chemistry of combustion. This works brilliantly. . . . The book gains immeasurably from the author's eye for detail and from his understanding of the beliefs and prejudices of the day. . . . Informative and lively account." —The Sunday Times (London) "The best depiction of the Great Fire seen to date. . . . He manages to describe not only the atmosphere of the event itself, but also the experience of living in seventeenth-century Britain." —Soho Independent "A riveting book for those who like their history with a bit of mystery." —The Brisbane News "A rollicking good yarn." —The Age (Melbourne) "Blends high-class original research with a narrative style that mimics fiction. . . . Horrific subjects have served this man well and he has a knack for plugging into the dark themes that run like molten rivers beneath our social veneer." —New Zealand Herald "Neil Hanson’s descriptions of the inferno are like CNN reports from Kosovo." —Camden New Journal "It's not the technical data which makes the book so riveting though. It's the flair with which Hanson invests his account with qualities usually reserved for novels–narrative drive, persuasive character sketches, vivid scene stealing." —Sunday Star Times (New Zealand)