Recycling is not a concept that is usually applied to the eighteenth century. “The environment” may not have existed as a notion then, yet practices of re-use and transformation obviously shaped the early-modern world. Still, this period of booming commerce and exchange was also marked by scarcity and want. This book reveals the fascinating variety and ingenuity of recycling processes that may be observed in the commerce, crafts, literature, and medicine of the eighteenth century. Recycling is used as a thought-provoking means to revisit subjects such as consumption, the new science, or novel writing, and cast them in a new light where the waste of some becomes the luxury of others, clothes worn to rags are turned into paper and into books, and scientific breakthroughs are carried out in old kitchen pans.
"Recycling is not a concept that is usually applied to the eighteenth century. 'The environment' may not have existed as a notion then, yet practices of re-use and transformation obviously shaped the early-modern world. Still, this period of booming commerce and exchange was also marked by scarcity and want. This book reveals the fascinating variety and ingenuity of recycling processes that may be observed in the commerce, crafts, literature, and medicine of the eighteenth century. Recycling is used as a thought-provoking means to revisit subjects such as consumption, the new science, or novel writing, and cast them in a new light where the waste of some becomes the luxury of others, clothes worn to rags are turned into paper and into books, and scientific breakthroughs are carried out in old kitchen pans"--
This reader-friendly browse book offers fascinating and concise information on everything from angels and Satan, heaven and hell, and reincarnation and exorcism.
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.
The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste As one of its driving principles, The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste analyzes the double reconstitution of discarded items. In this afterlife, discarded objects might transform from a worthless object into a plaything or a work of art, and then to an artifact marking a specific historical time period. This transformation is represented through various forms of recollection—stories, photographs, collectibles, heirlooms, monuments, and more. Shaped by nostalgia and wishful thinking, discarded objects represent what is wasted, desired, and aestheticized, existing at the intersection of individual and collective consciousness. While The Afterlife of Discarded Objects constitutes a version of revisionist historiography through its engagement with alternative anthropological artifacts, its ambition stretches beyond that to consider how seemingly immaterial phenomena such as memory and identity are embedded in and shaped by material networks, including ephemera. Guruianu and Andrievskikh create a written, visual, and virtual playground where transnational narratives fuse into a discourse on the persistent materiality of ephemera, especially when magnified through narrative and digital embodiment. The Afterlife of Discarded Objects is printed in full color and includes references, an index, and over seventy hi-resolution color images. “The Afterlife of Discarded Objects: Memory and Forgetting in a Culture of Waste uses contemporary theory, literature, popular culture, and personal narratives to investigate how we assign political, socio-cultural, and aesthetic meaning to objects. The book is unique in applying personal narratives and testimonies of contributors from around the world to provide insights and critiques of Western attitudes toward these objects. The Afterlife of Discarded Objects provides transformative social commentary through scrutiny and stories of discarded/found objects in Eastern Europe and in the West encouraging us to reflect more critically on our relationships with things. The stories and theories interwoven in Guruianu and Andrievskikh’s book turn memory into matter and aspire to teach through their exploration. It’s a lofty goal, and the book succeeds.” —Sohui Lee
Written by specialists in the field of Egyptology, this book is a readable introduction to ancient Egypt, covering all anticipated subjects and stressing the monuments and material culture of this remarkable ancient civilization. The rich natural resources of ancient Egypt provided a wealth of raw material for its structures, sculptures, and art, while its geographic isolation helped to ensure the survival of its rich culture for centuries. While other references focus on the people and battles central to Egyptian history, this reference explores the material culture and social institutions of ancient Egypt. The book focuses on pharaonic Egypt, covering the period from roughly 5000 BCE to the beginning of the Greco-Roman Period in 320 BCE. At the front of the work, a timeline provides a quick look at the major events in Egyptian history, and an introduction surveys ancient Egypt's physical geography and history. Alphabetically arranged reference entries written by expert contributors then provide fundamental information about the buildings, jewelry, social practices, and other topics related to the material culture and institutions that made up the Egyptian world. Excerpts from primary source historical documents provide evidence for what we know about ancient Egyptian culture, and suggestions for further reading direct users to additional sources of information.
Tracing the emergence of the domestic kitchen from the 17th to the middle of the 19th century, Sara Pennell explores how the English kitchen became a space of specialised activity, sociability and strife. Drawing upon texts, images, surviving structures and objects, The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850 opens up the early modern English kitchen as an important historical site in the construction of domestic relations between husband and wife, masters, mistresses and servants and householders and outsiders; and as a crucial resource in contemporary heritage landscapes.
Uncovers sources from the parish pauper to the gentlewoman to consider relationships with clothing across the social hierarchy in the long eighteenth century.Descriptions of women's clothing increasingly circulated across textual genres and beyond in eighteenth-century England. This book explores the significance of these descriptions across a range of sources including wills, newspapers, accounts, court records, and the records of the old poor law.Attention has rested on women literate and wealthy enough to leave behind textual or material traces, but this book ranges from the parish pauper to the gentlewoman to consider descriptive languages, rhetorical strategies, and relationships with clothing across the social hierarchy. It explores how women described their own clothing, but also looks at how it was described by overseers, family members, retailers, and even strangers. It shows that we must look beyond isolated descriptions to how, why, and who was describing clothing to understand its role. Chapters uncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.ncover themes of material obligation, expectation, and entitlement.This book also contributes to our understanding of the material literacy of eighteenth-century consumers. It traces the role of textual description in this dissemination of knowledge about clothing, but also alerts us to what was happening beyond the written word, drawing attention to the communication of multisensory information. Above all, it demonstrates that there remains much still to be unpicked from textual sources.
If the twentieth century saw the rise of “Big Science,” then the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were surely an age of thrift. As Simon Werrett’s new history shows, frugal early modern experimenters transformed their homes into laboratories as they recycled, repurposed, repaired, and reused their material possessions to learn about the natural world. Thrifty Science explores this distinctive culture of experiment and demonstrates how the values of the household helped to shape an array of experimental inquiries, ranging from esoteric investigations of glowworms and sour beer to famous experiments such as Benjamin Franklin’s use of a kite to show lightning was electrical and Isaac Newton’s investigations of color using prisms. Tracing the diverse ways that men and women put their material possessions into the service of experiment, Werrett offers a history of practices of recycling and repurposing that are often assumed to be more recent in origin. This thriving domestic culture of inquiry was eclipsed by new forms of experimental culture in the nineteenth century, however, culminating in the resource-hungry science of the twentieth. Could thrifty science be making a comeback today, as scientists grapple with the need to make their research more environmentally sustainable?
A New York Times Best Art Book of 2019 “A riveting book . . . few stones are left unturned.”—Roberta Smith’s “Top Art Books of 2019,” The New York Times This fascinating and enlightening study of the tie-on pocket combines materiality and gender to provide new insight into the social history of women’s everyday lives—from duchesses and country gentry to prostitutes and washerwomen—and to explore their consumption practices, sociability, mobility, privacy, and identity. A wealth of evidence reveals unexpected facets of the past, bringing women’s stories into intimate focus. “What particularly interests Burman and Fennetaux is the way in which women of all classes have historically used these tie-on pockets as a supplementary body part to help them negotiate their way through a world that was not built to suit them.”—Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian “A brilliant book.”—Ulinka Rublack, Times Literary Supplement
