front cover of Arkansas Made, Volume 1
Arkansas Made, Volume 1
A Survey of the Decorative, Mechanical, and Fine Arts Produced in Arkansas through 1950
Swannee Bennett
University of Arkansas Press, 2020

Arkansas Made is the culmination of Historic Arkansas Museum’s exhaustive investigations into the history of the state’s material culture. Decades of meticulous research have resulted in this exciting two-volume survey of cabinetmakers, silversmiths, potters, fine artists, quilters, and other artisans working in communities all over the state.

The work of the artisans documented here has been the driving force of Historic Arkansas Museum’s mission to collect and preserve Arkansas’s creative legacy and rich artistic traditions. Artisans from across Arkansas’s rich cultural landscape come to life among the colorful quilts, playful temperance jugs, and inventive effigies included in Volume I. Readers will delight not only in the striking full-color images but also in the stories that weave them together across time and region to create a lively picture of art and artisanship in a state too little celebrated for its creative output.

Volume 1
Quilts and Textiles • Ceramics • Silver •Weaponry • Furniture • Vernacular Architecture • Native American Art

 
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front cover of French Silver in the J. Paul Getty Museum
French Silver in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Charissa Bremer-David
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2023
Vividly illustrated, this is the first comprehensive catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s celebrated collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French silver.
 
The collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French silver at the J. Paul Getty Museum is of exceptional quality and state of preservation. Each piece is remarkable for its beauty, inventive form, skillful execution, illustrious provenance, and the renown of its maker. This volume is the first complete study of these exquisite objects, with more than 250 color photographs bringing into focus extraordinary details such as minuscule makers’ marks, inscriptions, and heraldic armorials.
 
The publication details the formation of the Museum’s collection of French silver, several pieces of which were selected by J. Paul Getty himself, and discusses the regulations of the historic Parisian guild of gold- and silversmiths that set quality controls and consumer protections. Comprehensive entries catalogue a total of thirty-three pieces with descriptions, provenance, exhibition history, and technical information. The related commentaries shed light on the function of these objects and the roles they played in the daily lives of their prosperous owners. The book also includes maker biographies and a full bibliography.
 
The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/french-silver/ and includes 360-degree views and zoomable high-resolution photography. Also available are free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.
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front cover of Liber Amicorum in Honour of Diana Scarisbrick
Liber Amicorum in Honour of Diana Scarisbrick
A Life in Jewels
Edited by Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, Sandra Hindman, and Carla Van De Puttelaar
Paul Holberton Publishing, 2022

Coinciding with Diana Scarisbrick’s ninety-fourth birthday, this work honors her extraordinary career as the “world’s leading jewelry historian.”

Through twenty contributions by noted scholars, Liber Amicorum explores the pioneering research accomplished by jewelry historian Diana Scarisbrick. These collected pieces celebrate both the length of Scarisbrick’s career and its wide-ranging nature, touching upon her work with everything from gems, rings, chalices, bindings, and crown jewels to contemporary jewelry production, jewel theft, and individual collections.

Throughout the book, the insightful historical research of the contributors is beautifully supported by high-quality illustrations. These bring their essays to life, highlighting the splendor and fragility of some of the objects that are discussed as each delves into the work of this eminent scholar.

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front cover of Silver
Silver
Nature and Culture
Lindsay Shen
Reaktion Books, 2017
From spoons to bullets to sterling coins, silver permeates our everyday culture and language. For millennia we’ve used it to buy what we need, adorn our bodies, or trumpet our social status, and likewise it’s been useful to vanquish werewolves, vampires, and even our own smelly socks.  This book captures all of these facets of silver and more, telling the fascinating story of one of our most hardworking precious metals.
           
As Lindsay Shen shows, while always valued for its beauty and rarity—used to bolster dowries and pay armies alike—silver today is also exploited for its chemistry and can be found in everything from the clothes we wear to the electronics we use to the medical devices that save our lives. Born in the supernovae of stars and buried deep in the earth, it has been mined by many different societies, traded throughout the world, and been the source of wars and the downfall of empires. It is also a metal of pure reflection, a shining symbol of purity. Featuring many glistening illustrations of silver in nature, art, jewelry, film, advertising, and popular culture, this is a superb overview of a metal both precious and useful, one with a rich and eventful history.
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