This down-to-earth information-packed book is the very best kind of collecting companion. Among its practical features are recommendations for choosing, evaluating and caring for a collection, how to negotiate the best possible price, and a glossary bristling with facts and definitions. Rose Leiman Goldemberg learned, bought and wrote this book through her own practical and passionate love of antique jewelry.
Drawing on diverse perspectives, this collection of 12 essays and around 150 colour illustrations explores the history and mysteries of the “Coral Road” from the Mediterranean to Japan. From Italy, with its ancient traditions of deep-sea coral fishery, production and trade, the reader is transported to Tibet and India, where coral has long been revered as a Buddhist treasure and amulet. The focus then moves to Japan, with the book highlighting the vivid red coral “tree” of folklore and festivals and the lavish use of the exotic gemstone in the magnificent accessories and craftwork of the Edo Period (1603–1868), before tracing the history of Japanese coral fishery, trade and production in modern times. Inspired by an urgently perceived need to preserve the legacy of precious coral for future generations, this retrospective, yet forward-looking, book will appeal to a wide readership, from marine ecologists to economic, social, cultural and religious historians, as well as scholars of fashion and design.
This book presents fifty-one didactic and devotional Sufi poems (with English translations) composed by the ulama of Brava, on Somalia’s Benadir coast, in Chimiini, a Bantu language related to Swahili and unique to the town. Because the six ulama-poets, among whom two women, guided local believers towards correct beliefs and behaviours in reference to specific authoritative religious texts, the poems allow insight into their authors’ religious education, affiliations, in which the Qādiriyyah and Aḥmadiyyah took pride of place, and regional connections. Because the poems refer to local people, places, events, and livelihoods, they also bring into view the uniquely local dimension of Islam in this small East African port city in this time-period.
Global Trade and Cultural Authentication, edited by Joanne Eicher, showcases the complexity and enduring aesthetic and ingenuity of Kalabari artisans. The Kalabari people, most of whom make their homes in the eastern Niger Delta region of western Africa, are renowned for the artistry in working with globally imported textiles and dress for centuries. The 22 essays in this edited volume feature the work of leading Nigerian and American scholars and offer an in-depth, nuanced understanding of Kalabari textiles, aesthetics, and engagement with past and present global trade networks. Using dress and textiles as a lens, Global Trade and Cultural Authentication explores the Kalabari people's centuries-long role in the global trade arena. Their economic interconnectedness demonstrates that Africa was never a "dark continent" but, rather, critically involved in a global trade built around Kalabari resourcefulness and imagination.
The ten chapters collected in this book manifest the current global interest in trans-border dialogues and trace the origins and development of Italian and Bengali internationalisms in the period from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. Despite having differing political statuses and lacking a shared geographical or historical space, Bengal and Italy remained uniquely connected and, at times, actively sought to transcend different kinds of constraints in their search for a significant dialogue and mutual enrichment in the fields of literature, music, architecture, art, cinema, diplomacy, entrepreneurship, travels, education and intellectual engagement. In this context, the volume confronts strategies of evaluation adopted by prominent representatives of the Bengali and Italian cultural environments with particular emphasis on readings embedded in the moment of contact. Both regions benefitted from this ‘elective affinity’ as they advanced along their respective paths towards a fuller awareness of their specific identity, and thus set a positive example of transcultural understanding which may inspire today’s world.
The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores the rich devotional life of the Italian household between 1450 and 1600. Rejecting the enduring stereotype of the Renaissance as a secular age, this interdisciplinary study reveals the home to have been an important site of spiritual revitalization. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources are scrutinized to cast new light on the many ways in which religion infused daily life within the household. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life -- from childbirth and marriage to sickness and death. Breaking free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome, The Sacred Home investigates practices of piety across the Italian peninsula, with particular attention paid to the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland. It also looks beyond the elite to consider artisanal and lower-status households, and reveals gender and age as factors that powerfully conditioned religious experience. Recovering a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday, The Sacred Home offers unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.
Only a few years ago, if you needed an appraisal of The revolution in the personal property appraisals gems and jewelry for any reason, you asked your local field (of which jewelry is a part) is a little more than a jeweler, who hastily scribbled a one-line handwritten decade old. There now exist uniform standards and note. He or she usually performed the appraisal for procedures for personal property appraisers, classes free, and did so with reluctance, accommodating you in valuation techniques, and degree programs in the only because as a customer you held the promise of a valuation sciences. future sale. The price your jeweler may have assigned Professional jewelry appraisers are on the edge of to the jewelry was granted without the least regard a new vocation. Banks, insurance companies, and for market research, legalities, or ethics. In most in governmental agencies have all helped bring about stances, the estimate was no more than a properly the changes and contribute to the birth of the profes completed sales receipt. sion; they have realized that they can demand and Gemologists were usually pushed into the role of get high standards of performance and integrity from appraiser by their jeweler employers, who were eager jewelry appraisers, as they can from appraisers of real to gain an advantage over their competitors by adver property.
This volume presents a broad panorama of the current status of research of invertebrate animals considered belonging to the phylum Cnidaria, such as hydra, jellyfish, sea anemone, and coral. In this book the Cnidarians are traced from the Earth’s primordial oceans, to their response to the warming and acidifying oceans. Due to the role of corals in the carbon and calcium cycles, various aspects of cnidarian calcification are discussed. The relation of the Cnidaria with Mankind is approached, in accordance with the Editors’ philosophy of bridging the artificial schism between science, arts and Humanities. Cnidarians' encounters with humans result in a broad spectrum of medical emergencies that are reviewed. The final section of the volume is devoted to the role of Hydra and Medusa in mythology and art.
