"A history of shells in early modern Europe, and their rich cultural and artistic significance"--

Vigorous and highly readable, this portrait of the enlisted man's life aboard the U.S. battleship California depicts the devastation at Pearl Harbor from the hazardous vantage point of the open "birdbath" atop the mainmast.

Icelandic culture is so strongly oriented towards language that the visual arts didn't truly begin to develop until the early twentieth century - which is remarkable for a Western country. This unique situation may explain the nature of the contemporary art scene in Iceland. Even though Conceptual art remains a considerable international influence, and globalization is most certainly affecting this isolated island in the North Atlantic, Icelandic art continues to develop at its own speed, marked by a playful creative energy and the pleasure of experimentation. Icelandic Art Today introduces 50 of the country's most important artists - including Finnbogi Petursson, Gabriela Fridriksdottir, Helgi Thorgils Fridjonsson, Icelandic Love Corporation, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Margret H. Blondal, Olafur Olafsson + Libia Castro, Ragnar Kjartansson and Ruri and Steingrimur Eyfjord - who have contributed to the contemporary landscape of Icelandic art from the 1970s through the present. Essays by historian and curator Christian Schoen, critic Halldor Bjorn Runolfsson and Director of the Reykjavik Art Museum Hafthor Yngvason trace the development of Iceland's avant-garde over the past 40 years.

This book presents new information on the export trade, patronage, artistic collaboration, and the small-scale shop traditions that defined early Rhode Island craftsmanship. This stunning volume features more than 200 illustrations of beautifully constructed and carved objects—including chairs, high chests, bureau tables, and clocks—that demonstrate the superb workmanship and artistic skill of the state’s furniture makers.

This book contains expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production from the Reformation to the Restoration.

Frits Liefkes (1930-2010) lived with Indonesian art. His house in The Hague was full of it. Bought almost entirely at auctions and from art dealers in the Netherlands during a period of four decades, on his death he bequeathed his collection to Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde in Leiden. This book presents some of his most beautiful and interesting objects. Reflecting his special interests, golden jewellery and wonderful textiles are particularly well represented in a collection that portrays the skilled craftsmanship of Indonesian artisans.

How the nature illustrations of a Renaissance polymath reflect his turbulent age This pathbreaking and stunningly illustrated book recovers the intersections between natural history, politics, art, and philosophy in the late sixteenth-century Low Countries. Insect Artifice explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative and intellectual community, compelling its members to seek solace in intimate exchanges of art and knowledge. At its center is a neglected treasure of the late Renaissance: the Four Elements manuscripts of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), a learned Netherlandish merchant, miniaturist, and itinerant draftsman who turned to the study of nature in this era of political and spiritual upheaval. Presented here for the first time are more than eighty pages in color facsimile of Hoefnagel’s encyclopedic masterwork, which showcase both the splendor and eccentricity of its meticulously painted animals, insects, and botanical specimens. Marisa Anne Bass unfolds the circumstances that drove the creation of the Four Elements by delving into Hoefnagel’s writings and larger oeuvre, the works of his friends, and the rich world of classical learning and empirical inquiry in which he participated. Bass reveals how Hoefnagel and his colleagues engaged with natural philosophy as a means to reflect on their experiences of war and exile, and found refuge from the threats of iconoclasm and inquisition in the manuscript medium itself. This is a book about how destruction and violence can lead to cultural renewal, and about the transformation of Netherlandish identity on the eve of the Dutch Golden Age.